


Soft Reset

by GuardianKarenTerrier



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha kids - Freeform, Angst, Aphasia, Cuddling, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Other, Touch-Starved, and davesprite, and everyone basically, and hal, aphasia comes in a little late, beta kids and trolls will be here later, glitched game, holy crap i think i actually managed some angst in there, i am not sure thats a thing but it should be, i think, it's more about the friendship, jane dealing with everyone else's issues poorly, kids resolving issues poorly, kids with issues, polymoirailship whoo, sburb into after sburb, the relationships are gonna get hell complicated, the romantic relationships are not really the focal point here, there are gonna be way more people involved in this by the end, when it gets to the after sburb part
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:37:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianKarenTerrier/pseuds/GuardianKarenTerrier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane knew by now that her friends had some issues.  She knew by now that they'd all grown up alone.  </p><p>She just hadn't really thought about it before. </p><p>She's still trying not to think about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Character Select

Jane tries to roll over and gets a face full of someone's arm and someone (else's?) hair for her trouble. She rolls back the other way, rolls one too many times, and smacks into a wall.

 

Flailing upright, very much awake now, she's met with Dirk's lone raised brow.

 

He's sitting on the other side of the bed, boxing everyone else in, although Jake is curled against his back and Roxy is sprawled with her limbs flung out so that she has one arm draped over Dirk. The other arm is the one Jane just rolled into. And when she glances down, it turns out the reason her leg is asleep is because both of Roxy's legs are on top of hers.

 

Honestly, there's nowhere near enough room on Dirk's bed for all of them. There's nowhere near enough room in Dirk's _room_ for all of them, even if someone had been willing to take the floor (no one ever is, and Jane shies away from thinking too hard about why).

 

Jane sighs and props herself more firmly against the wall, trying and failing to disentangle her legs from Roxy's. “Dirk, are you seriously still standing watch?”

 

Dirk shrugs and looks away, but Jane doesn't miss the way he leans back into Jake. He only thinks it's casual. It isn't.

 

Where Jake hardly stops talking long enough to breathe, Dirk never speaks around them now that they've all (finally) met in person. Jane privately thinks it's cute how awkward and unfamiliar he must be with the sound of his own voice, if painfully sad. Jake keeps up a running narration now that there's someone to talk _back_ ; Dirk has reverted mostly to text, she thinks because he doesn't know how to keep his emotions out of his voice.

 

Roxy's commentary goes without saying.

 

Actually, between Roxy and Jake, Jane's not sure anyone but her has actually noticed how little Dirk talks now. There's no silence left to _fill_ and that was Dirk's problem in the first place, judging by how loud his speakers go whenever she accidentally turns them on (not the whole problem, judging by the long, silent conversations with himself she's seen crop up in the occasional hastily-closed text file, but _she isn't thinking about that)._

 

“We talked about this,” Jane says, exasperated, when the silence stretches. “We're here so you can sleep. There are the robots to keep watch. That's why we're _here_ , remember?” Anyone else's room would be more spacious, but it's hard enough to get Dirk to go to sleep. If there's the slightest chance anyone else is in danger he's liable to keep going until he finally just collapses. She sort of suspects he'd still be liable to do that even if he were (still) alone.

 

Dirk shrugs again.

 

Jane groans and bangs her head against the wall. “This is defeating the point, you know that, right? Look, I'm awake now! I'll stand watch, while _you_ sleep.” She wriggles again, this time managing to dislodge Roxy slightly. “Quick, let's switch places.”

 

Dirk snorts silently and shakes his head no before going right back to staring out the window.

 

Jane gropes under the bedsheets (whoops Roxy) until she finds a smuppet, then lobs it not at Dirk, but at Jake.

 

It hits him full in the face. He mumbles in his sleep, winds himself tighter around Roxy's arm, and absently headbutts Dirk before stilling again.

 

Jane bangs her head against the wall again.

 

He's not looking at her but she knows Dirk is smirking. She knows.

 

She throws the next smuppet at Roxy instead and Roxy's reaction does not disappoint.

 

The other girl explodes upright in a giggly flurry of limbs, knocking Jake off the bed altogether and startling Dirk into a strife stance in the middle of the room. He's as careful with his swords as ever but at least one smuppet dies an early death because this room really is insanely crowded.

 

“Dirk!” Roxy giggles, rolling out of bed in a maneuver that Jane's brain refuses to accept just happened. Roxy had been all tangled up in the sheets and the minefield-scattered smuppets and _Jane_ , how could she possibly just spring up like that? “Heeeeey y're sposed to be alseep, silly! Asleep! Sleeeeeeep, DiStri.” She waves her hands in front of his face, drawing them apart slowly. “Sleeeeep.”

 

Dirk lowers the sword, then puts it away after another long moment, but he doesn't make a move back towards the bed.

 

Jake snorts and flops over on the floor, still dead to the world.

 

Roxy flings her arms around Dirk and lets gravity take over, falling back to the bed so hard she bounces and yanking Dirk down with her.

 

Jane snickers even as she scrambles out of the way. When in doubt, sic his moirail on him, whatever that means. To Jane it means that Dirk is apparently unable to say no to Roxy, which she exploits shamelessly.

 

She probably should have scrambled off the bed while she had the chance. Rats. Now Dirk and Roxy both pin her in, and it's only a moment before the two of them lean over and haul Jake up again. He actually wakes up for a second, long enough to mumble “Thanks,” before slumping over the friend-pile.

 

Dirk taps something on the side of his shades and Jane is privately sure that several robots just ratcheted up an alert level or two. Dirk is kind of (justifiably) paranoid.

 

Roxy flings both arms around his neck and curls herself into him, causing the bed to dip in the middle and Jane and Jake both to roll in towards their friends. Jane catches herself and manages to squeeze a little closer to the wall (her legs still end up tangled with Roxy's somehow, but that's fine), and Jake just ends up pressed up against Dirk's other side with his head on his friend's chest.

 

Her heart still aches a little at the sight but even so Jane can't stop her smile when Dirk freezes for an instant, then slowly shifts to tuck Jake's head under his chin and put an arm around him. If Dirk is going to sleep at all it'll be while he has such visceral evidence that they're all right here and safe.

 

(She's caught him getting up and looking around to check everyone is still here and still breathing more times than she wants to count).

 

(She's gotten up to make sure he didn't go any farther from them than the roof more times than she wants to count. Because she knows Dirk's not... he's not _entirely_ like her other friends. Jake only had his grandma and that briefly, and Roxy only the carapacians, but that's enough that they don't have the problems Dirk does. Because she doesn't know how obvious it is to the others but it's clear to her that even though Dirk is just as silently, desperately grateful to have other people around at last, sometimes he just _can't handle it,_ and that's when Jane finds him alone on the roof or locked in the shower or, one or two times she's absolutely never going to let him know she knows about, huddled miserably in the closet in a pile of smuppets).

 

Despite her best efforts, Jane falls asleep before Dirk finally does.

 

When she wakes back up, he's sitting up against the headrest and fiddling with robot parts (she assumes), so who can say for sure if he actually slept? But she can hear Roxy in the shower (singing something Jane is pretty sure she doesn't want to know all the words to) and she's pretty sure Rox would have made sure Dirk got _some_ sleep, so. She did her best, it's out of her hands now.

 

How in the world does he sleep with those shades on. All right, so she's seen Jake sleep with his darn skulltop on, but Jake is apparently the world's heaviest sleeper so that's far less surprising. Except for the part where every attempt to sleep on his island has resulted on everyone on high alert for not just game constructs but also giant white monsters, which, okay, makes his ability to sleep deeply anywhere somewhat disconcerting.

 

She used to wonder half-seriously how a boy as careless as Jake could survive living on his island. Now she wonders entirely seriously, especially once she's seen her friend's scars.

 

They don't exactly make any attempt to conceal them. She doubts it ever occurred to any of them to worry about it ( _why would it who would they be hiding them from-_ ). Roxy has the fewest, scattered tiny scars from mistakes made learning to dodge and handle a gun, but she was still the safest of the three; Dirk has more, littered everywhere from building and fighting robots, strange looking scars from electrical burns and more from when he fought robots he'd built to outmatch himself.

 

Jake has the most by far, pale lines stark on his tan skin, darkened dots less noticeable but everywhere. His arms are the most heavily scarred, defensive wounds from the beasts on his island; there's a prominent knotted dark gash on the inside of his left arm that looks like it maybe had stitches at some point, though knowing Jake more likely he just wrapped a clean cloth around it until the bleeding stopped. Some of his scars are lighter than his skin, some are darker, and Jane's not sure why that is until she finally asks Roxy and learns that scarring can be different colors depending on how deep the injury is initially. That does not help. Even the fact that her friends _know_ that does not help. There are parallel lines on Jake's chest whose distance apart make it terrifyingly clear how large the claws that caused it were. There's even a faint bite scar on one side of his nose and she's pretty sure the story behind that would give her a heart attack.

 

There's a scar right across the vein on his right wrist that nearly gave them _all_ heart attacks, though he reassured them repeatedly it had been 'just' an injury from one of the frightened tiny flying bulls on the island.

 

It doesn't help that Roxy and Dirk are worryingly skinny. Jake at least looks like he's at a healthier weight, but he also inhales any food he can get his hands on. Jane makes a point of getting them all over to her own land at least once a week so she can bake because no, really, they all need to put some weight on, she can count Dirk's ribs from here.

 

(Did he ever have enough to eat? Did any of them?)

 

(She thinks of every meal she couldn't finish and every time she let leftovers spoil and all the cafeteria food she saw end up in the trash each day and her insides twist uncomfortably).

 

They have a schedule worked out for the shower by now- usually Roxy showers first in the morning, then Jane, and Dirk showers at night so he can hog all the hot water to himself for two hours.

 

Jake showers whenever the rest of them get fed up, shove him into the bathroom, block the door and yell until they hear water running. That happens increasingly often now that they all share a bed.

 

Jane had showered before Dirk last night though, filthy from falling into more than one mud puddle while fighting, so it's just Roxy this morning. Which is kind of a private disappointment to Jane- there's a lot of pretty neat automated stuff in Dirk's shower and she usually enjoys seeing what some of it does. The noise-activated sound system is by far her favorite feature, at least as of right now.

 

But Roxy in the shower and the two of them awake in turn means it's probably time to make the first attempts to wake Jake up, so Jane reluctantly shifts to get ready.

 

Stretching, Jane shoves Jake off the bed and into the smuppet pile. That doesn't accomplish anything but Dirk rolling his eyes behind his shades (does he know she can tell he's doing that? She has no idea). That's not a surprise. That's nowhere near enough.

 

Jane climbs off the bed- a bit awkwardly, since of course Dirk doesn't bother moving. She darts into the bathroom, hurriedly gets a glass of water before Roxy can hop out of the shower (the girl has no shame), and returns to upend it over Jake's head.

 

That works. She thinks Dirk might actually start to snicker before he hurriedly cuts it off as Jake startles awake.

 

“I say,” he complains, combing through his hair with his fingers. That doesn't make a difference that Jane can see but he drops his fingers, apparently satisfied. “Was that really necessary?”

 

“Yes,” Jane says at the exact same time Dirk makes a faint affirmative noise.

 

Jane notes that it's the first real noise Dirk's made in two days. She doesn't think it's a coincidence that it was in response to Jake.

 

Of course, now that he's awake, Jake's not about to leave room for anyone else to talk. “Oh that's just jolly good fun then, isn't it? Wake up a bloke like that, you're liable to give him a dangblasted heart attack,” he complains, sitting up and kneading at his chest, giving his shirt an affronted look like he suspects it's somehow complicit in his abrupt awakening.

 

Roxy eels into the room, clad in nothing more than a towel, and chirps, “Then it's a good thing we're all in good with a Prince of Heart, right?” She snags one of Dirk's old shirts and... someone's pants before skipping off again.

 

The first few times this happened Jake was bright red and unable to speak without stammering for at least an hour. Now he just keeps going, because Roxy is Roxy and no one is going to be able to explain the concept of shame to her. They've given up trying.

 

“That isn't remotely how these newfangled powers work and you know it.” Jake gets up and looks around, frowning. “What were we doing today?”

 

Dirk grunts, and tosses what he's been working on at Roxy, who's already back and dressed and catches it reflexively.

 

It's a gas mask in bright pink, the design subtly invoking a cat.

 

He tosses a second mask, in sky blue, to Jane.

 

“Capital idea!” Jake enthuses, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet a moment before snatching up his own mask. “We've been on all sorts of adventures as a foursome-” -and of course he doesn't notice everyone else's quickly masked expressions at that, of course he doesn't- “- But we've yet to adventure all as one here! Our final frontier!”

 

There's a long pause as everyone tries to figure out whether Jake's even aware of what he's referencing. When he shows no sign of either realizing it or ceasing to ramble about what kind of mischief four can get up to where two couldn't, everyone collectively absconds to the roof, masks in place.

 

Jane's mask is not actually all that different from Roxy's. While the Void hero's mask seems to be permanently grinning, Jane's suggests a far more subdued smile, although it does still seem ever so slightly feline. How long had these taken Dirk? They've all been in and around his apartment for some time now, and Jane doesn't remember seeing him work on the additional gas masks at all.

 

And it doesn't take long to figure out why Dirk might have wanted to bring the girls along as well and alone time be damned, because Jake has an _extremely lenient_ view of personal safety. He leaps chasms so deep no one can see the bottom. He misses ledges and scrambles for holds. He darts ahead and then stumbles back with his pistols up, shooting wildly at whatever he's brought back to them _this_ time. Occasionally he forgets to aim _before_ he shoots, which Jane figures was probably less of an issue when the boy had an entire island to himself, uncounted monsters and a single robot. Stray bullets would have been less of an issue than they are now, where Jane and Dirk and even Roxy, who at least knows her own way around a firearm, have to throw themselves out of trajectories far more than should ever, ever, _ever_ be happening.

 

Also, Jake never shuts up.

 

“Bravo, good jump there Roxy! Was a tad bit nervous there for a moment when you had to yank for that branch- oh, spot on, Jane! Good show! Dirk, how spanking, never would have thought to use those roots as a ladder- oh, yes, I suppose we all could have used that bridge, dreadfully sorry, didn't mean to shoot out the supports there- dust or whatnot in my eyes I suppose.” Jane is positive he's beaming under the mask. “This is brilliant, a real ripsnorter, I've no idea why we didn't think of it sooner! Oh, whoops, incoming. Rifles ready everyone! Well, varying strife specibi ready, I suppose, but that doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it- ooph! I say, chap, let a man finish what he's saying!” Jake casually riddles an imp with bullets whilst still chattering a mile a minute.

 

Okay, Jane is revising her opinion. Dirk is quiet not only because Jake won't shut up (ever, he never shuts up, never, ever, and did that imp just slap its hands over its ears and abscond?) but also because he needs all his concentration to prevent Jake's bringing _every enemy within earshot_ down on them from swiftly becoming fatal.

 

Yeah, no wonder he wanted backup.

 

And of course, Dirk being Dirk he can't just _say so_ , so all those nights in his apartment weren't for added robotic security after all- it was so he had access to everything he needed to make the new gas masks.

 

(Also, he won't admit it, but Dirk is just as fascinated by being able to finally, finally actually _touch_ another person as Roxy and Jake, but that's still something Jane is determinedly not thinking about).

 

She almost wishes she was back on her own planet with Roxy, but-

 

“...and man, it was _so hard_ when you had to get off Pesterchum to go to, like, _school_ \- what even is that like, anyway, Jane? Is it really like in the movies? With jocks and preps and nerds and Heathers and queen bees? Do they really do senior pranks? _Is Mathletes a thing?_ No, never mind, later- but anyway! It was always really frustrating because you'd be all 'c'mon Rox go out and socialize you're always on' and I'd be going 'haha yeah' thinking yeah, okay, I think maybe I still have some canned green beans or something I can share with the carapacians? But they don't really _get_ humans and they don't talk really and it wasn't the same, _at all_ , and Dirk was so far away and maaaan we'd talk when you guys weren't on of course but we kinda ran outta topics a lot? There wasn't a lot to say about current events, like wow hey hi Dirk is the world still totally fucked oh hell yeah it is, second verse same as the first, so we didn't really-”

 

Yeah. That.

 

She can so sympathise with Dirk right now, because Roxy spent just as much time leading enemies to them back in the Land of Crypts and Helium as Jake is doing now.

 

It doesn't hurt that Jake's not talking about topics that make Jane feel stupidly guilty, and then feel stupid _for_ feeling guilty, because it's not like she picked out where each of them was gonna grow up.

 

But later, when the four of them are sitting on the roof of Dirk's apartment passing a flask around (thankfully one of Dirk's, so it's actually just clean water), Jane stares out at the horizon and pictures ocean stretching out unbroken all around her.

 

Then she thinks about the painfully cramped apartment beneath her.

 

She shakes herself and looks back at her friends.

 

Roxy's giggling at something Jake said. Dirk's trying not to smile. Jake enthusiastically loops an arm around Dirk's shoulder and she can tell Dirk's fighting himself for a moment before he gives in and leans heavily into Jake. Roxy leans over and pushes Dirk's head down onto Jake's shoulder, laughing.

 

(Roxy keeps a hand buried in Dirk's hair, scratching at the roots of it. Dirk shifts so his whole side presses against Jake. Jake's hand is clamped so tightly around Dirk's arm that his knuckles are white and the scars on them stand out).

 

Jane's moving forward before she realises it, hugging Roxy from behind. Roxy laughs again and squirms around until she can hug Jane back.

 

“I don't know if I ever actually said it,” Jane manages, though Roxy is squeezing her hard enough to restrict her breathing, “But it's really great to finally meet all of you in person.”

 

As Roxy topples them over onto the boy's laps, Jane feels more than hears Dirk huff out a breath just as Jake says warmly, “Yeah, it really is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not pull Jake's scars outta nowhere, I just stared in a mirror because I work with angry animals and figured they would be comparable scars  
> (so yes I do have every one of those)
> 
> and Roxy is singing whatever you want her to be but I was personally thinking of Seven Drunken Nights


	2. Choose Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FEELINGS

She feels like an idiot when she finally realises, because seriously, how did she not know so much sooner.

 

No one tells her, which is something. Not much, but something. At least she didn't have to be told. She finds out all on her own eventually.

 

A lot of it is that Dirk is, unsurprisingly, still the hardest of her friends to read by far.

 

All of their expressions are slightly- off, which came as a bit of a shock; even after accepting that Roxy had been telling the truth all this time Jane's never really caught up to all the various implications. (She still hasn't. She's not sure she wants to).

 

Jake talks as much with body language as he does voice, broad sweeping gestures and exaggerated facial expressions; he's modeled much of his behavior on movies, and it shows. Roxy's a little easier, but it's hard to say why when by all rights she should be having as much trouble as Dirk does. Jane's seen carapacians by now and they don't have facial expressions to speak of. Maybe the alcohol affects it somehow- Roxy's never made any attempt to control her expressions, as far as Jane can tell. And the carapacians _do_ have fairly eloquent body language so there's that.

 

But Dirk was raised by robots and puppets with fixed expressions and pre-programmed body language. The problem isn't even that he didn't have expressions to mirror, it's that he _did_ but they were blank. In an apartment full of puppets and robots Jane feels guilty that the only one that trips an Uncanny Valley reaction in her is _Dirk_.

 

But Roxy and Jake seem just as unbothered as they are by Dirk's silence and so Jane reels in her reaction as hard as she can.

 

What happens is that one night she wakes up and notices Jake and Roxy are huddled on the bed playing Battleship (why do they even have- no, not thinking about it) and Dirk's spot is empty, and so she steals her way to the roof to make sure he hasn't gone too far.

 

He's up there, pacing back and forth and muttering to himself.

 

Jane pauses in the stairwell, suddenly unsure, because it occurs to her now that Dirk hasn't just been _quiet_ since she met him. She's suddenly acutely aware that she's never actually heard him _speak_ so she hangs back rather than check on him right away.

 

She waits for the muttering to resolve into words.

 

And waits.

 

And waits some more.

 

Five interminable minutes later she has a sinking sensation in her stomach as she realises- it's not _going_ to resolve into words. It's just frustrated noise, rising and falling and utterly failing to approximate language. Sometimes something like a _sh_ or a _th_ or once a _ja_ slips in, but then they slip away again, dissolving away into what's mostly breathy hissing noises.

 

It hits her like a punch to the gut.

 

Jake had his grandma, no matter how brief a time; and Roxy had the carapacians around, and they do speak, even if it doesn't quite sound the same as she's used to (and might actually account for Rox's speech patterns more than the alcohol alone does).

 

Dirk didn't have _anyone_ , not unless she wants to count in Lil' Cal, and she really (really, really, deeply) doesn't want to count in Lil'Cal.

 

Dirk can't talk. _Dirk can't talk_. How can that be, he's always been the most articulate of the entire group, always went on and on over their chat clients and definitely had the largest vocabulary of anyone she knew (Jake's ridiculous sayings notwithstanding) and-

 

-and there had never been anyone around to teach Dirk. No Dad, no Grandma, no strange aliens stealing his food supply- Dirk had robots and puppets, and _none of them talked;_ the few that do are ones he programmed himself, later, and that's- that raises more questions than it answers, but Jane has a haunting suspicion it's more a text-to-speech program in their coding than it is something Dirk worked out himself.

 

She wonders what they all sound like to him. She wonders how much of what they say he knits together from context clues and body language. If he's had AR translating for him. Or can he understand them fine? She's honestly not sure how- something like this works. Actually, would body language even help? Does Dirk really _know_ any body language? Before the game, he'd only seen other people in recordings, and he still reacts strangely sometimes even to innocent gestures.

 

(Jake tried to high-five him once. Dirk nearly stabbed him before he could check his reaction).

 

She must make some noise she's not aware of, because Dirk (who is constantly hyper-aware of _every_ little noise) suddenly drops his shoulders and spins to face her.

 

“I, uh.” She swallows. “Just came to check on you.” And then she kind of wants to hit herself, because this is something they do _all the time_ (she's the lightest sleeper next to him) and they usually just go back downstairs together.

 

Wordlessly.

 

Augh.

 

But Dirk rolls his shoulders back, dips his chin in what could be interpreted as maybe half a nod, and follows her back into the apartment.

 

Except he _doesn't_ go back to the bedroom, which is...

 

Well. She didn't know there was a computer terminal in the hallway. It's pretty well-hidden, though, and she's never seen Dirk use it.

 

He's not going to use it now. Instead, he selects a folder- they're all named with letter and number combinations that seem random to Jane, so that doesn't help- taps the mouse, and looks at Jane for a long moment before turning to walk away.

 

And he does _walk_ away, which isn't usual for him.

 

 _None_ of this is usual behavior for Dirk, so Jane closes her eyes, takes a breath, and then opens them and double-clicks the file.

 

It's a video.

 

Even if she hadn't known who he was, it would have been immediately obvious Dave Strider is Dirk's brother. He fiddles with the camera for a moment- this is a lot more home-video than she's used to associating with him, and then his surroundings register with her and she realises it _is_ a home video. She's got no clue how it stood up to time so well, but the older Strider is definitely in this same apartment. Furnished and everything.

 

Dave clears his throat a couple times before speaking. She's heard him before, on DVD commentaries, but it hits her for the first time that this is how she's always imagined Dirk's voice, only Dave's is lower. “Hey, kid. I know you're not, uh, not gonna really get this intro bit til you're older, and I probably should have just taped Sesame Street or some shit- shit, I shouldn't be swearing, should I- well I fucked that up a couple times already, damn I did it again.” He leans away from the camera and shrugs. “Oh screw it I know damn well you're gonna learn, just, all of the swears. Fuck it. But, uh, before I switch this to... all the educational shit, I just. Wanted you to know.” He stops and leans back again, this time sliding one hand up into his hair before sighing.

 

Then- and he's famous, in her time, for _never_ doing this- he takes his shades off.

 

Dave Strider looks into the camera and says quietly, “I'd be there if I could, Dirk.”

 

The rest of the video is- it _is_ like Sesame Street, or at least, like a strange conglomerate of children's programming. But it's all Dave Strider's filming, and she's _positive_ there are no copies of this in her time. Not even a rumor. Dave is the only actor (teacher- she can't really consider this acting); any other parts are played by puppets (because of course they are). And- yeah, this probably would have been a more effective teaching aid if he _had_ just taped actual kid's programming, but. It's... something special that Dave felt this was important enough to do himself. Colors, shapes, language skills, basic math; when she glances at the run time, it's several hours long. She skips around.

 

It's _mostly_ language skills.

 

Before she can wonder about that, a familiar ping distracts her. Jane clicks the flashing Pesterchum and discovers she is already, impossibly, logged in.

 

timaeusTestified [TT] began bothering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 15:01

TT: He tried.  
TT: I wanted you to know that.  
TT: It was set to autoplay on a regular schedule when I was an infant.  
TT: I never have been able to determine why it didn't.  
GG: um.  
GG: I don't want to come off as rude or insulting, Dirk, but  
TT: How much can I understand when you're speaking.   
GG: well.  
GG: yes.  
TT: It varies. You, probably about 76%, 80%. You have fairly standard patterns of speech. Roxy is more difficult, but she pieced things together when we were around eight or nine and began to send me audio files with text translations, so I would put her around 52%, 54%. About half the time, she would say.  


She waits for a few minutes, but he doesn't continue. (Also, she's never really realised that none of her friends are actually entirely sure of their ages, but that's one of those shrieking thoughts she's still doing her best to avoid).

 

GG: And Jake?

 

It takes Dirk a lot longer to reply this time, and the pauses between his comments are both longer and more frequent.

 

TT: The colloquialisms he favors tend not to translate very well.  
TT: His volume and tendency to talk quickly don't do a lot to help.  
TT: And I'm not actually sure he realises.  
TT: That.  
TT: Well.

 

There's another, even longer pause.

 

TT: Overall, I would say... about 10%, 12%.

 

Jane has to stop for a second, closes her eyes and leans back even though she's positive Dirk is nearby and can see her. Her vision is suspiciously blurry.

 

Whatever other emotions may color her personal opinion, there's no denying that Dirk _loves_ Jake. She's sure it's not a healthy relationship (she's not sure her friends actually know what those _are_ anymore) and it's probably a bad idea and she'd rather they weren't dating, but it's a _real_ relationship and Jake _matters_ to Dirk in a way that very, very few things ever have.

 

They all matter to Dirk more than anything, really (and somewhere in there is _yet another_ soul-crushing revelation that Jane shies from), but Jake is important to Dirk on an entirely different level.

 

And Dirk's trade-off for actually meeting him in person was losing most of his ability to communicate with him. Which he's not even sure Jake knows.

 

She doesn't know what to do with this information now that she has it. Nothing's changed, not really, Dirk could no more speak an hour ago than he can now, but that doesn't stop the world from feeling flipped on its axis (again, and at this rate it has to land back right-side-up eventually, right?). It's not like this is the first crawling horror she's found about her friend's lives (nearly the first thing all of them wanted was a hug, because Dirk and Roxy had never had one and Jake can't remember, and Dirk and Roxy hadn't let go of each other for a good ten minutes) but this one her mind can't seem to let go, worrying at it like a dog with a bone.

 

“You rap with your robots,” Jane blurts out at last, eyes falling back open. She might see a shadow in the corner of her eye for a hundredth of a second but when she turns, scanning on automatic (paranoia is catching, especially when it's warranted), there's no one there. “You talk to AR.”

 

Which had seemed weird, which had always seemed weird, even moreso than his being the only one of them who willingly actually responds to Caliborn, but then if Jane could count the number of people she could talk to on one hand she'd probably have gotten pretty desperate for conversation too. And AR is definitely a better alternative to Caliborn.

 

TT: The same way I rap with any of you- in a text-based medium.  
TT: Although, actually, AR can speak. I coded him with a text-to-speech program. Wanted to give him a better starting point than I had.

 

And okay, that is apparently Jane's absolute limit for crushing revelations for the day, because that tips the watering in her eyes over into actual tears and she ends up absconding before Dirk can be upset that _she's_ upset. He doesn't need or want her pity (the word seems to have weird connotations for him and Roxy anyway) and she doesn't want to feel this way about him at all but _god_ he thinks this is _okay_ and it's not. It's really, really not.

 

She doesn't go far- no one does, not alone- but she needs to be _away_ right now, very badly. She misses her normal life and she misses thinking that her friends had at least relatively normal lives and enjoyed messing with her. (Roxy had asked her if Thanksgiving really had that much food on the table. Jake had asked her if people really went door-to-door for candy on Halloween. Dirk had asked her all about cars and how they were put together and how they worked. It's all so much worse in retrospect).

 

All right. She needs to calm down. She needs to remember that this doesn't change anything. That Dirk is still exactly the same friend she's known for years and years- the same Dirk who'd be insulted and furious and _hurt_ at the idea of her feeling sorry for him.

 

But oh, god, she'd do anything to go back (forward?) in time and make that video play.

 

When Roxy comes to get her, some hours later, she thinks she's at least cried out for now. Roxy helps her up, unusually gently, and goes back with her to Dirk's room, where the boys are now playing Hangman and Jake doesn't seem the least perturbed that Dirk is writing everything down, because Jake has no reason to find that odd.

 

She forces down her gut reaction as hard as she can and dredges up a smile when Dirk looks up and gathers them in with his shielded eyes. She joins them on the floor as Roxy starts guessing letters too and she looks at the blanks and letters and ignores the twinges of her conscience as hard as she can.

 

It's a roundabout survivor's guilt she feels, and she _knows_ that, and she still feels like she's failed her friends so very, very badly.


	3. Status Effect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the house behind me has been vacant since i moved in and i am intensely goddamn curious

Jane hadn’t anticipated ahead of the game just how much time she’d be spending with Roxy. But the boys need alone time (for certain changing values of ‘alone,’ admittedly) and sometimes Jane needs to get a little further away than Dirk’s roof or the other side of the house or a different part of the forest. Sometimes she’d rather be in another Land altogether.

 

            Which Jake and Dirk don’t _like_ , exactly, but (wonder of wonders) they understand. So long as it’s never more than a night or two, Jane gets her own alone time- or would, if Roxy didn’t cling to her like a barnacle.

 

            The times they stay at Roxy’s house and Jane trips over empty glasses and the tangled cords of video games long extinct make it very, very hard for Jane to stay annoyed over that.

 

            Roxy insists on a pillowfight, and begs her and begs her to have a ‘sleepover like in the movies,’ and fails miserably at figuring out what exactly a makeover entails (honestly, Jane doesn’t know either), and challenges Jane to round after round of Mortal Kombat and various Street Fighters and Mario Kart and dozens of other games that Jane’s never heard of. Jane’s not very good at them, but it’s hard to say no to Roxy’s exuberance.

 

            “This is so much better than playing the computer,” Roxy declares as Karin successfully KO’s Ryu for the final time. (Jane really wants to play another game now). “The computer cheats. I mean, I know everyone says that and it’s like blaming the wonky controller, like dude no the purple controller doesn’t suck, _you_ suck, but seriously now that I’ve got a comparison? The computer cheats. Janey. Janey, it _so_ cheats.”

 

            She convinces Jane to play through story mode.

 

            “See?” Roxy says an hour later, when Jane still hasn’t made it past the third round. “The computer s’agoddamn cheater.”

 

            Jane’s pretty sure she’s just bad at this, but she thinks about the Game and decides _not_ to think any further about Roxy’s observation.

 

            “Let’s go check out that vacant house on the east side,” she says instead, and Roxy squeals and grabs at least three guns.

 

            Roxy’s house dragged a lot more of her surroundings with her than the others did, so there are bits and broken pieces of carapacian dwellings still littered around. The house Jane’s referring to is one that came through almost entirely intact. It can’t possibly be that interesting to Roxy, who grew up in and out of identical houses, but Jane’s fascinated by it and Roxy has a kind of weird recursive fascination with Jane’s fascination.

 

            The house is- empty and unsettling and full of dust, now, though it wasn’t at first. They aren’t there often enough or long enough to keep the dust and dirt away. They have to check in with Dirk and Jake. (Jane doesn’t think she ever checked in with her dad as often as she’s doing with her friends).

 

            (She doesn’t think any of them quite believe they’re really not _alone_ anymore, even after all this time).

 

            Jane’s not sure carapacians ever lived here anyway. She’s not sure _anyone_ lived here, ever, though the spray-painted message _fi standtoocclose i might fallin_ on the wall of the possibly-once-a-living-room makes her think Roxy’s been here plenty.

 

            There’s also a closet upstairs where someone wrote _They can take the house but they can’t take our love… or our closet_ , but she thinks that’s a lot older. It’s got decent grammar. And it’s not in the right color.

 

            There are a lot of weird little details about that vacant house that interest Jane, some of them reflected in Roxy’s own house. Like. The house was empty the first time they investigated it, mostly, except for the cleaver and the broken Sega Dreamcast in the- garage? Was that room supposed to be a garage? There’s a wall that doesn’t match the rest where a garage door could have been once, and there’s a workbench in the corner at a perfect height that would make Dirk jealous if they ever get around to showing the boys this place. The workbench is entirely painted some color that can’t seem to decide if it’s blue or green or some other color entirely, for reasons Jane can’t begin to fathom.

 

            Also, none of the electrical is wired quite right, and the stairs aren’t all the same size, but those issues are present in Roxy’s home too. Some of the light switches are sideways. There’s a room she thinks might have been a kitchen that has half the tile ripped up that _Roxy_ stops her going in unless they borrow gas masks first and she wonders when they actually stop (stopped?) using asbestos as a building material. Or whether, for whatever reason, they started again.

 

There's also an improbable amount of mold, and Jane would worry about its effects on their health, but she's not so sure they're going to live long enough for that to be an issue anymore.

 

            Roxy’s bored after an hour of exploring the house, though, and starts chattering as they pass through a room with a tree trying and failing miserably to grow up through the floorboards. “I used to pretend that was like a Christmas tree, you had those, right? I think you said that was a holiday you celebrated anyway. I mean like. I’m preeeeetty sure it was.” Jane knows Roxy is absolutely sure, because Roxy used to beg her for details every year.

 

            “They’re generally evergreens,” Jane says, like she has every other time they’ve had this discussion.

 

            Like every other time Roxy plows on with no hint she’s heard. “Did you get a lot of gifts? I bet you did. Your dad woulda given you a ton of’em, right?”

 

            “…Yeah.” There are a ton of things in that question Jane doesn’t want to think about. Ever, preferably. She tries her hardest to steer a subject change.

 

            When they’re on the way out, they pass the room with the wall graffiti again, and with the light at a different angle Jane can see the boys have been here after all. Added in orange beneath Roxy’s handwriting is the line, _but if I’m too far gone I’ll never win._

Jane sleeps back-to-back with Roxy and humors her with stories about holidays with her dad.

           

            And then Roxy decides everyone needs to celebrate the holidays as a group.

 

            All the holidays. In succession.

 

            Jane can't really say no, not after the way Jake's face lights up fierce with hope and the way Dirk's face shuts down with quickly-smothered longing, but they started with Easter (which it turns out none of them actually know anything about, none of them are religious really which is probably a good thing or they'd have had some serious crisis-of-faith problems by now), move on to the Fourth of July after arguing whether it counts and she's still pretty certain Jake and Roxy just wanted colorful explosions (why Dirk is that competent at making fireworks is something no one plans to ask about anytime soon) and by Halloween she is regretting giving in.

 

            At least she's managed to reason them into staying at her house for a bit. Jane has _been_ trick-or-treating, after all, and someone has to hand out the candy. (And spending a good ninety per cent of their free time in Dirk's apartment has got to be increasingly unhealthy for everyone. Especially Dirk).

 

            Her friends don't actually grasp Halloween very well either but they've rallied for it better than they did the previous 'holidays.' They _all_ show up dressed as pirates, and Jake spends half the night with a bedsheet draped over himself pretending to be a ghost, and if he hauls Dirk rather unnecessarily beneath it with him a few hours into the horror movie marathon (during Jurassic Park which the girls still don't really think counts but Jane supposes for Jake it _would_ ) Jane and Roxy quietly pretend not to notice.

 

           Thanksgiving gets skipped. There's a really ridiculous argument about first whether they're celebrating too many western holidays and then a worse argument about the morality of Thanksgiving in the first place and then it's just not worth it and anyway there isn't really enough food in the Medium to go having anything like a Thanksgiving meal. (There could be a self-regenerating pantry full of all their favorite foods and her friends would probably _still_ ration it from sheer force of habit, but the amount of food available right now may actually be finite, no one really wants to find out).

 

            She finally convinces Roxy to slow down around Christmas. Around when they celebrate Christmas. Jane has no idea what month it is. She's not sure if that bothers her or not.

 

            There's a weird intricate dance that happens as everyone tries to keep the gifts they're necessarily making by hand a secret while not leaving each other alone, and frankly Jane is guiltily glad when she manages to stay in her Land by herself for two whole days without more than scattered pesterings from the others. She stays in and bakes cakes for everyone and is careful to always answer them within minutes and by the time Roxy inevitably ends up back on her doorstep she feels something like relaxed and Rox's suggestion to go to the lake is met with lazy acquiescence.

 

            Jane's never done so much swimming in her life as she has since starting the game. All her friends were surrounded by the ocean and move as easily through water as they do on land, though, so she always says yes when anyone wants to go to her lake. Roxy's at her most graceful in the water and Dirk can catch fish in his bare hands and Jake can hold his breath for a long, long time.

 

            Jake's already there, in fact, doing a lazy backstroke, and she doesn't see Dirk so she assumes he's fishing again. Jane wades in and laughs along with Roxy when their splashing brings Jake upright, sputtering, and her good mood lasts all the way up until Jake asks them if Dirk's still back at the house.

           

            A hasty round of questions makes it painfully clear that no one's actually seen Dirk in days and though he _has_ been pestering everyone, no one can say with certainty that they haven't been talking to AR- even Roxy, who normally _can_ tell.

 

            The sheer panic that slams through Jane takes her by surprise.

 

            She doesn't have the unhealthy codependency of her friends, the Game is the most isolated she's ever been rather than the least, and the half dozen psychology books stolen from Roxy's house and squirreled away in Jane's own bedroom means she _knows_ she can't let any of the others start retreating to their own lands but _especially_ not Dirk. He was the most confined and the most isolated (the most damaged the most at risk) and honestly Jane is never able to remember how they all get to Dirk's apartment that day.

 

            “Split up,” Jane says- orders- in the entryway, and Jake's halfway to the roof yelling for Dirk before she finishes saying it, and Roxy salutes and heads for the bathroom, and so Jane alone makes a beeline for Dirk's room.

 

            It looks empty. It looks empty and like no one's been here for a week and the closet door is cracked the barest bit open.

 

            Jane can't move quietly enough to go unnoticed and she doesn't try. She walks into the room and something rattles behind the closet door. She steps closer and hears a soft _thump_ and a smuppet tumbles into visibility behind the crack.

 

            She opens the door as slowly as she can and almost doesn't see him at first. There's a pile of plush and robot parts slumped against the far wall and she almost thinks she's mistaken before she sees a momentary flash of white-blond hair.

 

            “Dirk,” she says gently, edging cautiously closer. “It's Jane. Jake and Roxy are here. I'm gonna go and get them, okay?”

 

            There's a hand fisted in her shirt before she can blink.

 

            Dirk shifts just enough puppets with his free hand that she can see him shake his head. He's breathing too fast and too shallow and the hand in her shirt is shaking and because it's _Dirk_ this is all kind of terrifying.

 

            “Dirk,” she attempts again, and earns another, fiercer headshake. She forges on anyway. “They're worried. _I'm_ worried. Is- Did something happen?”

 

            There's a hesitation this time before he shakes his head. He doesn't let go, but his grip loosens minutely as he huddles into himself a little more.

 

            “Okay.” She sits back as much as Dirk's deathgrip will allow and thinks. Winces. “Too much?”

 

            He nods so sharp and so short that she feels it more than sees it. It's dark in the closet and she doesn't dare turn on a light. Dirk's still sensitive to light. To noise. Movement. People.

 

            All the holidays in succession and Dirk can't really handle people and Jane's realising he's probably never going to be able to and he still startles so easily, paranoid and defensive and they set off _fireworks_ with him what were they _thinking?_ What was _she_ thinking? Fireworks and then Jane hadn't let them come back here, she'd insisted they all spend time away from Dirk's because the walls were starting to close in on her and once Jake and Roxy had agreed Dirk had followed and he'd never gotten to relax (as much as he ever did), never released the singing tension that follows him everywhere even without his friends overwhelming him.

 

            Jane just wound him tighter and tighter and then didn't let him go.

 

            She is the worst friendleader. It's her.

           

            “Sorry,” Jane rasps, and then she can't take it anymore and surges forward and hugs Dirk, scattering his pile. He's rigid and unresponsive in her arms and she can feel his heart hammering ( _and it's_ _Dirk_ and she's always just kind of _assumed_ his heart rate never picks up from 'totally chill' and this is seriously freaking her out) and he _still_ hasn't let go of her shirt.

 

            “I need to go tell Jake and Roxy you're all- that I found you,” she lets him know, gently disentangling herself. (More sensory input just when she's realised he's gotten overstimulated. Brilliant, Crocker- _why_ does the voice in her head sound like AR?) “I won't bring them in here. We'll be just outside, okay? If that's all right.”

 

            He lets her go, in slow increments, each finger of his hand seeming to loosen independently of each other. He retreats, partially reburying himself, and it's one of the worst things Jane's ever seen and it hurts in a way she can’t describe because Dirk's- he's the one that keeps the rest of them steady. He's always been _there_ whenever they truly needed him, in one way or another, he's always found a _way_ to be there (Brobot and Lil' Seb and if Dirk can't protect them himself he'll still damn well make sure they _are_ protected). He may say she's their leader but she's _not_ , he got them here, he saved them, he protects them even now (she's not sure she's ever seen him sleep).

 

            Dirk is supposed to be the strongest of them all. He's supposed to be unflappable, utterly untouchable, a law unto himself, and he's not _supposed_ to have to hide himself in a closet when he's overwhelmed with sights and sounds and sensations he's never experienced before. He's not supposed to be someone that can _be_ overwhelmed, supposed to be cool and collected and Jane's life has turned into a twisted game of house and she doesn't want to play anymore. She doesn't want to be the mother, doesn't want to need to be the responsible one because the one she trusts to actually _be_ responsible can be rendered barely able to function by sensory overload.

 

            “Stop the universe, I want to get off,” Jane mutters to herself, and cuts off her own rising very-definitely-hysterical giggle when Dirk tilts his head at her and a red light sheets across his shades. It's only then that she realises they all ran here too hastily to bring any computing devices with. She thinks even Jake's skulltop is back at the lake.

 

Only a minute slump to his shoulders lets Jane know Dirk realises what her sharp indrawn breath means. Reading Sanskrit upside down and backwards while running seems like it'd be easier than reading Dirk, some days, but this she catches.

 

“Uh,” she says at last, at a loss again. “I’ll be. I’m going to. I’ll just ask Jake and Roxy if they’d stay on the roof. Is it- is it alright if I stay in your room?”

 

Dirk spends long moments either thinking that over or interpreting it, she’s not sure which. Both, maybe. Finally he nods again and Jane retreats trying not to feel relieved.

 

Jake doesn’t understand when she asks them to stay on the roof a while longer, but Roxy catches on quickly enough and distracts him with an offer of putting some puzzles together. (Why are all her friends five years old at heart? –Oh. Right).

 

Sighing, Jane slumps into Dirk’s computer chair and determinedly ignores the closet. The first time the computer pings her, she determinedly ignores that too.

 

The fourth time it occurs to her it could be Dirk so she sighs and moves the mouse.

 

TT: Hey. 

TT: Hey.

TT: Damn it, Jane, I know you can hear me. See me. Whatever.

TT: Hey. I know you’re there.

 

She wonders if AR counts as a personality disorder.

 

GG: Yes, I’m here. What is it?

TT: Just wanted to say thanks.

GG: Errr… from you, or from Dirk?

TT: I don’t see why it can’t be both.

GG: Oh. I guess you’re welcome, then.

GG: Although I’m not sure how much help I really was. This is rather outside the scope of my experience.

TT: Yeah, I know. So. Thanks.

 

            Jane pretends not to hear the closet door opening behind her. She’s not sure what to say now, to Dirk _or_ AR, so she lets her hands hover over the keyboard before dropping them with a sigh. Then, although she knows AR and therefore Dirk is monitoring this computer, she opens up his browser and searches for information on panic attacks.

 

            She’s sure she didn’t handle this _right_ , but she might as well see where exactly she went _wrong_.

 

            Ten minutes later, she’s still pretending to be unaware that she’s not the only one in the bedroom, but she’s also relieved to find she didn’t mess up quite as badly as she’d thought. Sure, the hug was a bad idea, but she’d realized that while she was still giving it. She still felt bad that she hadn’t tried any harder to get him out of the closet, but most of these sites were saying that was actually the _right_ thing to do, so. She supposed she’d just tolerate the guilt and probably get Roxy if this happened again.

 

            It was terrifyingly likely this would happen again.

 

            She’s pulled out of that increasingly morose headspace when Dirk drops a deck of cards in her lap.

 

            “Should I go get the others, then?” she asks, getting up and looking between him and the cards.

 

            Dirk shakes his head and a blackjack program opens on its own on the computer screen.

 

            “-Oh. Uh. All right.” Jane ends up sitting on the floor with him, silently playing blackjack, until early the next day. By the time Jake and Roxy spill into the room at last, laughing and arguing about who may or may not have flung puzzle pieces off the roof in frustration, Dirk’s back to his normal self.

 

            She can never figure out _when_ he does it, but a week later when Jane steps into her own bathroom at her own house, the walls light up at a touch and the shower stall plays any music she wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dirks panic attack reflects my own experiences with them and isnt meant as an overarching description of all possible panic attacks


	4. Hidden Character

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> standard apology here work ate me (ive got scars to prove it) also i got terribly sick and couldnt talk and was running around with a tiny notebook a pen and a lot of on the fly sign language for a bit which i mention because i am positive it is hilarious to SOMEONE 
> 
> i finally just went and hung out with my twin because then i dont really have to worry about talking 
> 
> and one last thing- this chapter? this was not supposed to happen.

          

 

  It’s always been obvious, at least to Jane, that the boys don’t have a stable relationship no matter how much effort they put into it. Dirk is too clingy and controlling (too afraid of being left alone again, of waking up), and Jake is too hesitant to let himself get too strongly attached (because he remembers what it was like to lose the only person in his life, and he doesn’t want to go through it again).

 

            So it’s not a surprise when she wakes to a cold bed and soft whispering from downstairs. It’s not a surprise, but to _her_ surprise, it _is_ a disappointment.

 

Downstairs- there’s a pile downstairs, made up of both Dirk and Roxy’s things (they’d both leapt at the excuse to have a combined pile, though Dirk’s excitement had been nowhere near as palpable as Roxy’s. She’d been _giddy_ ). One voice- just Dirk, then.   Jake can’t whisper even on the rare occasions he tries to.

 

            “Remember when you built that raft when we were, like, eight?” Roxy is whispering, and Jane winces, trying as hard as she can not to picture that and failing. Just as her friends must have failed, Jane’s seen maps of their era now, even accounting for Dirk’s intelligence and ingenuity there’s no way he could have piloted a raft to Roxy- Jane is pretty sure the constellations have actually changed by then, but even if they haven’t and even if Dirk had or built a compass he could only navigate by night, and-

 

            Thankfully Roxy’s soft laughter and Dirk’s huff of breath (which might be indignant, it’s getting easier with practice but he’s still hard to read) distract Jane from that increasingly distressing train of thought.

 

            Only to hear, “Yeah, I thought you’d get further, too. Glad you didn’t- had to be hell to swim back even that far. Especially when that storm blew up! Man, I’d never been so happy as when I finally raised you on the chat, I thought you were a goner, Dirk, you have no idea…” Roxy trails back into murmured incoherence and Jane fetches her cupcake and coffee (the collective idea of a ‘balanced breakfast’ amongst her friends had fast degraded to their definition of ‘something that can be balanced in one hand,’ and Jane finds she’s okay with this) before absconding back to the bedroom, and since she’s not about to try and talk to Jake right now, and unlike him she knows better than to interrupt a feelings jam, she decides to see if she can catch some extra sleep.

A full night’s sleep has been a rare commodity. Dirk wakes at a dropped pin, Roxy only ever catnaps; it’s true Jake sleeps through everything but since Jane doesn’t that is no help at all.

 

            She dreams of drowning, of water deep and dark and damning dragging her down, of waves pushing her over and currents tugging her under and she yells for help but she has hardly the breath to spare and even when she can force her voice above a whisper the wind whips the words away and she knows with an ache in her bones that there is no one to hear them, anyway.

 

            Jane wakes shaking and damp with sweat. Dirk is still downstairs with Roxy, and Jane flees the house entirely rather than face her friends.

 

            She ends up at Dirk’s apartment. Partly because Dirk and Roxy obviously aren’t there and Jake’s not likely to look for _her_ there, but largely because it’s become everyone’s comfort zone- even hers.

 

            Jane tosses herself on Dirk’s (everyone’s) bed with a sigh, pillowing her head on her arms. She’s been around Roxy and Jake too much- it isn’t long before she’s rambling to herself out loud.

 

            “I’m happy for them, seriously. It’s great that they have each other, that they’ve always had each other, especially… when there wasn’t anyone else around.” How old were they when they managed to reach out and start talking to each other, anyway? How many years did they each spend in their own technological echo chamber? “I still don’t think I really _get_ the moirail thing, but I mean, I kinda _want_ to. It looks just… It’d be nice, I think, to have someone we… I could just… talk it out with.” She rolls over and announces wonderingly to the ceiling (which is adorned with posters to stare at), “I think I’m jealous.”

 

            To her credit, she successfully ignores the first three pesterchimes. If Jake’s trying to message Dirk now she wants none of it. Jane did not sign up for this immersive psychiatric course and she would like to unenroll now, thanks.

 

            The voice from the headboard, however, yanks her attention quite neatly.

 

            “It seems you’re jealous,” it announces, a tenor version of Dave Strider’s voice with strange robotic undertones and all the emphasis on the wrong syllables. “And it seems to me we could commiserate in that area. They’ve been sickeningly pale since we were around ten, you know. Maybe younger.”

 

            It takes her a moment, but- “AR?” Jane says, rolling back onto her front and staring at the headboard.

 

            “JC?” the voice mocks back, and then, “Oh hey, I’ve never actually thought about that before. JC. The jokes, Miss Crocker, they’re limitless.” There’s a beat’s pause. “All right, not limitless exactly, I calculate you could make approximately three and a half dozen jokes before your references ran out, but…”

 

            “AR,” Jame interrupts forcefully. She’s learned better than to wait for this kind of ramble to cease on its own. “What do you want?”

 

            She doesn’t get a response for long enough that she doesn’t think she’s going to, and then, softer than before, “Like I stated before. Commiseration. We might not be able to have a pile, but we can still have a feelings jam.”

 

            It’s hard to read emotions in a robotic voice, especially one like AR’s that fluctuates oddly. Did Dirk program it to do that? Did _AR_? Even with the way the tone and pitch seem to fight with each other, though, Jane can pick up a hint of… uncertainty, she thinks. Vulnerability, maybe, but neither of them would have programmed _that_.

 

            But AR learns. Evolves. _Grows up._

 

(Maybe no one _programmed_ this at all).

 

            She raises an arm, stares at the way the white lines new-scarred across it stand out starkly against a fading bruise, and lets out a shaky breath. “Are you asking to be moirails?”

 

            There’s a _whirr click_ sound from the headboard in answer. Then nothing.

 

            Jane thinks it over. She’s jealous, yes, but she knows that to be a bad basis for a relationship; she has no interest in Jake as a moirail, and she refuses to contemplate breaking in on what Dirk and Roxy have between them.

 

            “We can try,” she says at last, and there’s… there’s a brief burst of music, gone before she can identify it.

 

            “Trying is all I ask,” AR says.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ar you were not supposed to be a major character how did you do that 
> 
> we should be going a little bit more au after this because this IS gonna go into endgame/aftergame territory and its gonna take a weird route there so forewarnings but it is still gonna be all about the psychological drama... itll just pick up some more players


	5. Save Point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and now we are in au territory

 

When it comes, it is both more and less dramatic than she hopes (fears). Less, because she is first introduced to the beginning of the end by Dave Strider dramatically tripping out of a crashed meteor with a troll on each arm and all three of them promptly faceplanting in the soil of her land; more, because their enemies may be farther away than they’d worried, but they are also far, _far_ less prepared than they’d hoped.

 

            When it comes, she is one of the first to know.

 

            She’s actually tinkering in her own room for once at the time. She’d asked AR, in as much privacy as she could wring from Roxy- once the other girl had learned of this fragile new thing between Jane and AR she’d been _incorrigible_ \- if he’d be willing to wait just a bit longer on the sprite body. That clown is still around somewhere, and she doesn’t trust him, and she doesn’t want- well. She’s afraid for him. She’s as afraid for him as she would be for Jake or Dirk or Roxy, now that she’s getting to know him as more than a shadow of Dirk, more than what she’d unfairly thought of as a kind of fancy voicemail. She’s seen body parts thrown haphazardly into those sprites, and she’s heard of worse, and she does _not_ want AR to be subsumed when she’s only just learning the differences between his personality and Dirk for the first time.

 

            It’s selfish, and she knows it, and so does he, and he agrees anyway because- somewhat to her own surprise- he does cede her her points.

 

            (Neither one of them is quite sure how moirailship works just yet, but she _thinks_ they’re making progress).

 

            So when it comes, she is back in her own room, alone as she ever is these days, tinkering with AR’s instructions. Dirk had been- startled, she thinks, when she explained; but he’s been teaching her some robotics anyway, and since she doesn’t want to risk a sprite and she _won’t_ accept Dirk’s shades, they’ve been working on a way for AR to travel with her as well.

 

            (And in trade she gets to teach Dirk to bake. He knows the principle, but he never had the ingredients- too many of them go bad too easily and too soon- and he lacks Roxy’s tendency to do things like assume powdered sugar is just as good as sugar, and even if his first attempt at blueberry muffins came out electric blue at least they were _edible_ ).

 

            AR is in her tiaratop, grousing through the shower speakers at her as she sits on the sink and uses the mirrors to get a better look as she pries at the tiara with a screwdriver.

 

            “Dirk was right,” the shower mutters and the tiara sparks once, briefly. “Something was really, really _wrong_ with this thing. You didn’t just have mal- and spyware, you had- I don’t even know how to explain this- and that wasn’t a firewall, that was some kinda highway for the firetrucks, complete with a remote for the stoplights, only they were _not_ gonna be coming to put a fire _out_ \- no, it was gonna be Fahrenheit 451 all up in this bitch and no literacy for anyone, the train hobos will not be coming, the train hobos are dead and gone-”

 

            “This it?” Jane interrupted, holding up a wire. “Blue, shorter, two possible matches?”

           

            AR’s rant pauses, which is kind of a shame, really. They tend to go in fascinating directions after a bit. “Yeah. Yeah, that should be it. Should be- huh. You know what, we don’t want that in either connection. We actually don’t want it at all.”

 

            Jane frowns, even knowing he can’t see it. Maybe they should be doing this at Dirk’s, but she thinks he and Roxy are having a gaming marathon. They’ve been having a lot of those- she knows they used to marathon Minecraft and StarCraft when they were younger, at least twice for days at a time, and it makes all the difference in the worlds that they can be in the same room now while they play.

 

            (She’s not too sure where Jake is, but then, everyone is kind of annoyed at him right now. It still makes her vaguely uneasy).

 

            “So it’s useless?” she asks.

 

            “Not… exactly. It’s some kind of direct-to-brain interface, though, and that’d be unsafe even if this thing was totally clean and protected. The way it is right now, it’s askin’ for trouble.”

 

            She winces. She’s heard enough stories about some of the things trolls did even to each other that the thought makes her more than just vaguely uneasy. “Right. Taking that out then. Possibly burning it.”

 

            “Nah, keep it the hell away from me, but hang onto it. Maybe we can cross-engineer it into something else down the line.”

 

            Jane is starting to suspect AR is a closet hoarder, but she sighs and tucks the removed wire into a pocket anyway. Besides, he’s hardly the only one of them with hoarding tendencies. She’d be more surprised if he _didn’t_ share that inclination. “Now what?”

 

“It seems the leftmost red wire ought to be next, should have a split in it- yeah, that one- take that and reconnect it to where the blue one was, then-”

 

And that’s when the whole room, possibly the whole planet, shuddered and went still.

 

“…Then it seems we finish this in the multiverses’ most ill-advised rush job and go see what the fuck that was.”

 

            Jane looks doubtfully at the tangle of wires and tiara on her lap. “Is it wise to rush this?”

 

            “Gods, no. But I don’t think we have a choice, and anyway I can jump in it now, I should be able to root out and fight off any last defenses it has.”

 

            “Is that safe for-”

 

            “Signs still point to no. Do it anyway?”

 

            She sighs and does it anyway, because if he can make concessions for her she can do the same for him. That’s probably how this is supposed to work, anyway, she thinks.

 

            One unwise rush job later and she arrives in time to see Dirk’s alternate universe brother’s spectacular entrance interrupted by this universe’s most spectacular triple faceplant. She wishes she could be more surprised, but if she’s following AR correctly there is every chance Dave could take after Roxy in some ways, as well.

 

            Dave peels his face from the ground, bringing himself up on one elbow and forcing the more disgruntled of the two trolls to waver to his knees. The other troll rolls upright on her own, cackling madly.

 

            “Did anyone get the number of that meteor?” Dave asks, just as Dirk and Roxy arrive with weapons at the ready.

 

            No Jake.

 

            Once again, the panic that slams through Jane and shakes her takes her entirely by surprise, sweeps her up and steals her breath; but it’s only a moment and then Jake is there too.

 

            She’s still stunned and shaken, but Jane’s gaze flits over Jake with a practiced eye, too used to what happens when any of her friends have been left too long alone again. Yes, he has new scars; long scratches half-healed on his right forearm, bruises snaking up beneath his shorts on both legs, even a shallow gash still bleeding sluggishly high up his forehead.

 

            He meets her eyes, but only for a moment before he flinches and shifts to look at Dirk and Roxy, then over to Dave and his trolls.

            (Somehow she thinks of them that way right from the beginning, even before hearing Rose say so only half-sarcastically).

 

            Dave flips all the way back to his feet in an oddly fluid motion, again bringing the disgruntled troll along, and if that movement hadn’t jolted Jane into remembering that he truly is Dirk’s brother the slow, silent nod he exchanges with Dirk a moment later would have.

           

            But-

 

            But there’s-

           

            She can’t see his eyes, of course, but there’s something- a curl of his lip, a twitch of an eyebrow, _something_ \- in his expression, something that doesn’t quite match the self-assured Dave Strider in Dirk’s dusty video.

 

            Jane only succeeds in placing it because she knows Dirk. Dave may think his expressions are controlled, but he never grew up in a vacuum, and Jane has had to learn how to look for the most minute signs of emotions over the past however long they’ve been in their session.

 

            Dave hasn’t let go of either of the trolls (Karkat is the one who always leans into him not quite imperceptibly, she learns, and the one that will sometimes pause mid-speech to lick him or Dave is Terezi), not even for a second, and all three shift so that they constantly press together all along their sides the way Dirk and Roxy do when they’ve gone too long without seeing each other (so about three hours).

 

            Dave and Karkat are both wracked with fine shivers every so often. Terezi’s tongue flicks out and tests the air like a snake’s. Dave’s lips are dry and cracked and his voice hoarse. Karkat shifts erratically from guarding Dave’s right side to guarding the door to the meteor.

 

            It clicks.

 

            Dave’s exhausted, and scared, and young. So are his friends (and Jane realizes she needs to do something about the way Dirk and Roxy are eying the trolls, at some point). Like all of them. _Just_ like all of them.

 

            Because he is.

 

            Jane doesn’t even know she’s holding onto the illusion until it shatters.

 

            She’s known all along it wasn’t their universe’s iteration of their ancestors that would join them. She’d known, intellectually, they’d all be closer to the same age. Of course this Dave isn’t the same as the Dave Strider in the movies, because it isn’t _him_ , not really.

 

            She’d known it, but she hadn’t known she hadn’t really _believed_ it.

 

            And then her time for introspection is up, because from the shadows of the door step yet another troll and Rose Lalonde, and Roxy tears away from them all and throws herself past the three guards and into her ectomom’s arms with minimal effort and a dry sob.

 

            “ _Mom,”_ Roxy says, at the exact same time that Rose says it, and even as Jane smiles for her friend she forces herself to acknowledge the sharp spike of fear that lodges in her throat.

 

            All this time she’d never realized she’d been thinking like their ancestors would show up and everything would just be _better,_ like they would save them.

 

            Somehow she’d never accounted for the possibility that their ancestors were thinking the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long pause in updates; I've been working like mad on a lot of original stuff because veterinary medicine does not pay well AT ALL, you guys.


	6. Side Quests

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mom got to take fencing, i almost flunked home ec, and i am still bitter thanks
> 
> sidenote i have still not given jake any injuries i have not actually had  
> i did not intend the polymoirailship to play out in quite the way its going

They go back to Jane’s house together. Neither Roxy nor Dirk is comfortable with trolls in their homes, their ancestor-descendants won’t leave their friends and Jane wouldn’t ask them to anyway, and Jake is still in the doghouse with the rest of them.

 

She almost, almost asks about all of them adjourning to the meteor instead, but there’s a faint familiar flicker in Dave’s face when he looks at it that makes her change her mind. Jane’s home is just a home; none of them have ever felt caged there.

 

There’s also the more practical consideration that her house has a large living room. She can’t exactly call what they do spreading out, there’s too much clumping together for that, but Dave and Terezi hop onto the back of the couch and Karkat crowds close below them, leaving just enough space for Kanaya and Rose to claim the rest of the seat and sit with their hands clasped.

 

Dirk and Roxy are already curled closely together partway up the stairs (Jane notes to herself just how many of them are prone to seeking out the high ground) and Jane hesitates as she watches Jake slowly claim a place on the floor.

 

He’s cradling his right hand oddly and it’s the glimpse of a swelling bruise that decides her in favor of searching for a seat next to him. At the least she might be able to persuade him to ice his hand, though she thinks that’s likely to be too little too late by now.

 

Before she can reach Jake’s side, though, her shower speakers shudder on at a volume she hadn’t known they were capable of.

           

“Separate lives, no more disguise, no more second chances,” wails out, and Jane groans and snags her tiaratop from the arm of the couch as she passes by. She raises an eyebrow at Dirk, who taps the side of his shades and shrugs.

 

So AR’s been in the entire conversation, anyway. He’s just being clingy again.

 

She can't really begrudge him that.

 

Jake gives her an oddly hesitant look as she settles beside him and she realizes that, what with the timing and the breakup, he has no idea about her and AR and this entire moirailship- thing. Unfortunately, now they don’t have time to explain, especially since Rose is beginning to speak.

 

“I’m not sure how far behind us our compatriots are,” Rose starts, more stiffly than Jane had expected, and Jane tries hard not to wince as she sees both how Kanaya’s hand closes on Rose’s and how Roxy is looking at her mother with the kind of hero-worship that gets people killed.

 

Dirk’s not looking at Dave like that, but then Jane doubts she’d know it if he was.

 

aporeticRepublic [AR] began pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 23:05

AR: He’s not.

GG: Normal people start a conversation with hello.

AR: Greetings. He’s not.

GG: I asked for that.

 

It’s trickier for Jane to balance the conversation on her heads-up display and the one playing out in front of her than it would be for Dirk or Roxy and she knows AR knows that. (And that he knows she knows that, etc., and she’s not doing that mental balancing act too, thanks). She also knows that he wouldn’t do anything to threaten their survival, so he must have a good reason for being distracting right now.

 

AR: He’s not, but he’s still giving them more credence than he should because of who they _could have been_ in your world. Which is not even something these versions of them could be, much less who they are.

GG: That sentence ought to be taken out and shot. And could you not do the mind-reading imitation thing for once?

AR: No.

 

“They should arrive in the next few days,” Rose is saying. “It would be… wise to have a plan ready for then, though John at least is notoriously bad at following them.”

 

Jane really doesn’t think she’s imagining the way Rose glances at Jake’s injured hand as she says that, or the way her gaze slides over Jane herself.

 

Jane meets her gaze, or would if Rose’s eyes didn’t slide again to lock onto Dirk instead. Jane shakes her head the way she would to be rid of a buzzing gnat and takes Jake’s hand without looking at him, presses lightly on the bruise and feels damaged flesh knit back together faster.

 

She might not know much about her own game powers but Jane does know how to work with what she has.

 

AR: It seems like you make her uncomfortable. I really wonder why that is.

GG: I see you got around to a name.

AR: Oh look, a wild subject change appears. It’s a handle, not a name.

 

Rose is moving on to asking about assets and aspects and advice and Jane does not have time to pander to AR’s weird internalized name issues. Unfortunately, AR frequently has nothing but time.

 

AR: I think it’s slimming. Don’t you think it's slimming?

GG: I think it’s pretentious.

AR: Well, obviously.

 

“The Maid of Life,” Jane says in answer to Rose’s inquiring glance, and turns over Jake’s healed hand like an offer, like a challenge, and she’s not even sure herself why until AR flashes on her HUD again.

 

AR: There can be only one.

 

Ridiculous melodrama aside, AR is _right._ Because Rose has come in and insinuated herself immediately into their session, taken _over_ their session, and if Jane recalls all of her talks with AR correctly Rose isn’t even in charge of her own session. John is, and he isn’t here; and Jane _is_ here, and she’s nominally the leader of _their_ session.

 

It was stupid of her to sit on the floor.

 

She gets up now, on the pretense of stretching, and winds her way over to an armchair. She can’t quite manage to perch on the back the way she knows Dirk can and thinks Dave and Karkat could, but she can crouch on the arm and that will have to do.

 

AR must say something to Dirk, because his head suddenly ratchets between her and Rose before settling neutrally on Karkat. Well, Karkat or Dave; the two are seated close enough that it’s hard to tell.

 

Something ugly, something about Knights and Seers, rises in the back of Jane’s mind but she shoves it down _hard._ She’ll worry about it later if she worries about it at all; there are more pressing matters.

 

AR: Well, shit.

AR: Sic’em, girl.

 

“What about you?” Jane addresses Terezi first, since she’s no one’s ancestor and she also isn’t currently physically attached to anyone’s ancestor.

 

Jane only realizes the cackle is a permanent undertone to this particular troll’s voice when Terezi promptly replies, “Seer of Mind.” The troll tilts her head, aligns her blind gaze perfectly, and adds, “Though I don’t know if I’m here too early or too late.”

 

Too late, Jane thinks tiredly, by hundreds of years, but she says, “Are- Rose and Dave the only ones who’ve reached god tier?” She wants to say Strider and Lalonde, but that would just be unnecessarily confusing.

 

“Yeah,” Karkat says, claws tearing a furrow in the couch. “Yeah, just them.”

 

“Aradia,” Kanaya reminds him, and Karkat laughs bitterly in response.

 

“Yeah, all right, Aradia made god tier too, but then she and Sol went off to fuckin’ play in the apocalypse like the pan-addled nookwhiffers they are. Gods know where _those_ fuckers ended up.” Karkat stops, then groans. “The gods _don’t know either_ , okay Strider, shut up.”

 

Dave’s mouth snaps shut. Jane hadn’t even noticed him starting to say something; she’s grown too used to her silent Striders.

 

AR: There is something massively jarring about hearing the words ‘Strider, shut up.’

GG: Strider. Shut up.

AR: I asked for that.

 

“Well, none of us are god tier,” Jane says, after leaving a moment for anyone else to speak up. “So that’s somewhere we should be starting with any plan.”

 

She sees Dirk’s arrested movement from the corner of her eye and isn’t surprised when orange text flashes briefly before her eyes.

 

timaeusTestified [TT] began bothering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 23:16

 

TT: Don’t let him goad you.

 

“Okay, but we just met,” Dave says, breaking into Jane’s thoughts. “How about we save the murdering for at least the second date? Not all of us are trolls.”

 

AR: No, but they might as well be.

 

Not for the first time Jane wishes AR had a body solely so she could hit him. In this instance, though, it’s for putting her unease into words. Dirk and Roxy’s ancestors don’t move or react like humans, they’ve spent too much time with trolls; and it doesn’t make it any easier that it’s the same way Dirk and Roxy themselves move.

 

Her friends move like that because they don’t know it isn’t how humans move. Their ancestors move like that because they’ve _forgotten_ that’s not how humans move.

 

It’s almost certainly unintentional, and it’s a stupid thing to be upset over, but Jane has long since given up on assigning logic to her reactions to anything involving her friends.

 

Dave’s standing up now, brushing his cape down, and forcing Jane to swiftly shuffle some assumptions as he says, “No, seriously. I cannot possibly express how much I seriously don’t want to hop back on board the shitty rock, but I could definitely use the sleep. Is anywhere in particular up on offer? Because I will crash on someone’s roof, I mean it.”

 

He turns back to Karkat and the cape swirls with him in a practiced motion. He says something too quiet for her to make out, then follows up with, “Seriously, we should check on the Mayor, too. It’s only been like a week since the last non-food item he ate.”

 

Karkat eyes him, groans, and snags Terezi from the couch. “Fine, jackass. Fuckin’ _try_ not to get your ass in trouble without us.”

 

“My ass is in more trouble _with_ you, trust me,” Dave says, almost mildly, and Jane only happens to be looking in the right direction to see Dirk’s weird flinch at that.

 

AR: Because his brother _isn’t gay_ , much less whatever the hell _this_ version of him is.

AR: He’s just taking a while to come to the logical conclusion.

 

“Whoever wants to stay here, it’s open,” Jane says. “It’s the biggest house we have, though there are some abandoned ones in Roxy’s land.”

 

TT: Actually, now that he’s sent his trolls away, I’d just as soon he came back to my apartment.

GG: Okay, ignoring every creepy overtone of that as hard as I can.

TT: AR is rubbing off on you.

GG: Unfortunately. Doesn’t that fall under moirailship duties?

TT: Yeah, well. She’s busy.

 

Jane looks over at Roxy, who’s unsubtly sidling closer to Rose and farther from Dirk.  She gets it, kinda, or rather she can conceptualize it even if she can't understand it; Roxy has never known and always idolized her mother, whilst Dirk has been one of the only constants in her life; but still. Dirk's idol-ancestor's just shown up, too, and ancestor or not Dirk still doesn't handle people very well, and Roxy's his moirail.

 

AR: You sort of are his moirail too, you know.

GG: You stay out of this.

AR: Spoilsport. 

 

Jane's not wholly certain of what AR does right after that, but it results in a Peter Gabriel song looping in her head.  It takes real effort not to say the words out loud as she hears "The grand facade, so soon will burn; without a noise, without my pride, I reach out from the inside," as clearly as if AR is standing next to her.

 

She should have had Dirk teach her more programming before letting AR at the tiaratop.

 

“Dirk and I are going back to his apartment,” she says instead of starting an argument she’s sure to lose. “Dave, are you coming?”

 

He flashsteps to her side with a nod almost before she’s finished her question. He’s not as fast as Dirk, but it’s a nearer thing than she expected, and they all leave for Dirk’s land more or less as one.

 

“So,” Dave says as they’re on their way into Dirk’s apartment. Jane looks up and sees him considering her out of the side of his shades in a way Dirk would never do. “You’re Jane. John’s ancestor, right?”

 

She eyes him right back and represses a flinch when his eyebrows arch up. She’s forgotten that no matter how much like their trolls he and Rose might move he still has the human background her friends don’t to analyze _her_ behavior with. “Uh, I’m more used to thinking of myself as his descendant, but yes.”

 

Dave snorts and relaxes incrementally as he ducks into the apartment itself, drawing Jane and Dirk in his wake like leaves. “The trolls have been using the word dancestors, for what that’s worth.” He looks around and appears to settle on the back of the futon as the highest seat he can find.

 

Seriously, she wonders about that.

 

She's planning to sit on the futon with him, but then she's perched on the counter and not sure how she got there but it doesn't seem worth moving, really.  Besides, that leaves the futon free for Dirk.

 

“So I noticed Rose doesn’t seem like she plans to bring this up,” Dave says slowly. He’s carefully not looking at Dirk, which bugs Jane in a way she can’t define. “But, uh. Well, first. Karkat and Terezi didn’t just go off to find the Mayor, although seriously we can’t leave him alone, he _eats_ things.” He rolls his eyes, but fondly, and goes on. “Anyway. The Mayor is a carapace who tagged along, I notice she didn’t seem inclined to explain that, either. Which is stupid. And, uh, we have another troll.”

 

He says that last part in such a rush that it takes Jane a second to parse it. In fact, Dirk actually works it out _before_ her, and turns to Dave with a furrow in his brow that’s not hard to decipher.

 

“Gamzee’s KK’s moirail,” Dave rushes on. “I haven’t seen him since like the first couple months on the shitty rock, he’s been living in the vent system, except when we landed he wasn’t _in_ there even though that can’t be possible.”

 

AR: That fucking clown. It’s the fucking clown, isn’t it.

 

“Does Gamzee happen to look like a clown?” Jane asks.

 

“Shit,” Dave says. “Yeah, he’s a clown. Shit. He _is_ here then.”

 

TT: He’s been here for some time.

 

Jane dutifully repeats this out loud, then adds for her own sake, “He’s been kind of a bother.”

 

Dave shocks her when he reacts to this by shoving his sunglasses up his face and rubbing at his eyes. “Fuck. I want to tell you how impossible that is, but you know what? I have seen more than enough fuckery to know better by now. Okay but. Avoid the clown, like you weren’t already doing that because common sense is a thing but. That isn’t the only thing I needed to explain.”

 

He stops again.

 

Jane waits patiently, because she’s gotten far too used to natural speech patterns being vanishingly infrequent.

 

She hears Dirk’s sharp indrawn breath and forces herself not to face him when Dave slips his shades off entirely and raises red eyes to meet them both in turn. Jane doesn’t know if _Dave_ knows it, but that’s the best possible thing he could have done to make it clear he’s _not_ their world’s Dave Strider.

 

It’s true he looks deeply uneasy about it, but that he took his shades off at all differentiates him more than Jane thinks could be clear to him even if he’s acting on the advice of his Seers. She doesn’t really think he is.

 

“There are three players coming on the battleship,” Dave says. “Jade, John and me. Another me, I mean, an alternate timeline me. Technically he should be a doomed me, but he prototyped himself, so. He’s me up until three years ago and then he’s him and fuck, I’m not making any sense anymore, am I.”

 

There’s a really weird susurrating noise coming from somewhere. After a moment, Jane realizes it’s her, trying her hardest not to break into hysterics.

 

AR: What.

TT: What.

 

“Uh,” Dave says, faintly. He shoves his shades back on, evidently at the limit of how long he can manage without them. “I know you guys aren’t trolls and all, and we are definitely not moirails here, but I am starting to think Janey here may actually need shooshpapping and I need you to know I kind of hate myself for even thinking that much less saying it.”

 

Jane waves him off, still snickering, as one of the room’s more hidden speakers shudders to life. In AR’s weirdly atonal voice, it drones, “I can’t let you do that, Dave.”

 

“Oh _fuck_ no,” Dave says, apparently on reflex.

 

“Yes,” Jane informs him. “Apparently Striders have an especially specific epidemic.”

 

After that, no one says anything at all for several minutes, because nothing really seems like a good follow-up to that. They stare at each other instead, which should be more awkward than it is but Jane has an text-program clone of one of her oldest friends sharing her headspace, she has officially given up on all semblance of social norms. Finally, Dave glances back at Dirk and chooses to break the silence with, “So. Birdsprite me sorta saw my universe’s you die. He, uh, may be a little messed up over it.”

 

Jane looks over at Dirk, worrying about whether she needs to be translating Dave’s rapid-fire speech style, but it looks like either AR has a handle on that already or Dirk can interpret his brother well enough to get by. There's definitely a communication subcurrent she can sense but not interpret. If it were anyone but Dirk, she'd think it was based in body language; this she can only compare to twins she's known.  There's the same kind of not-conversation that comes from knowing a person as well as you do yourself. 

 

TT: Understandably.

 

Dirk gives a long, slow nod in Dave’s direction even as his response flits across Jane’s vision.

 

From there, the two of them devolve into what she _thinks_ is some kind of conversation comprised near-entirely of eyebrow raises and subtle head tilts. Jane’s beginning to feel awkward and unnecessary by the time the two Striders rise and head for the roof.

 

When she doesn’t follow immediately, though, they both pause and look back at her.

 

“Uh,” Jane says.

 

“Strife,” Dave explains, gesturing towards the roof with a shrug. “Multiversal Strider thing.”

 

“Of course it is,” Jane sighs and follows them both up anyway.

 

She settles down with her back against the AC unit to watch and is immediately relieved at her choice of location when she doesn’t actually see anyone pull a sword. They’re just _there_ , suddenly and inexplicably.

 

The two don’t fight alike at all. That shouldn’t surprise Jane, but it does anyway.

 

Dirk evades where Dave defends, both of them faster than should be humanly possible but Dirk still ahead by a hair; Dave favors jarring crashes of blade against blade that shatter swords and force him to constantly draw new ones or to adjust the length of the one he calls Caledscratch on the fly, while Dirk prefers to turn his brother’s swords aside with deceptively simple flicks of his wrist.

 

They range all around the roof, at one point going back to back to fight each other, and each dodging all but the most superficial cuts from the other. Jane’s on her feet and leaning dangerously forward to watch without knowing quite how it happened.

 

It isn’t quite refined enough to match the kind of sword fights she half-remembers from old Zorro serials and Robin Hood movies and she’s never really realized how choreographed those fights were before. The two aren’t hacking and slashing, they know their weapons better than that, but neither is this anything like the polite fencing Jane’s never before known she pictures when someone mentions a swordfight.

 

They never stop moving and they’re both fast enough to leave afterimages in their wake. Dirk slashes horizontally and Dave somersaults under his blade; Dave rolls to his knees and Caledscratch arcs out into a full blade in time to catch Dirk’s downward swing, then reverts to a half blade to throw Dirk off balance as his katana is suddenly compensating for a pressure that no longer exists. Dave springs to his feet and chases Dirk across the roof with a flurry of blows from a now-full blade as Dirk parries and darts out of range and leaps over the low sweeps and ducks the high.

 

AR manipulates a sound file into opening in her HUD and blaring directly into her ears. “Let me in, let me in to the club, ‘cause I wanna belong and I need to get strong and if memory serves I’m addicted to words and they’re useless,” sings in her head, silent to the others on the rooftop.

 

There’s something not right about that, but Jane’s too involved in the strife she’s watching to think about it.

 

Dave rolls again and fetches up against the air condition unit not far from Jane. For the first time, it occurs to Jane that he’s very deliberately not using his god tier powers in this fight; she chalks it up to the same strange Striderian sense of morality Dirk and AR seem to share. They’ll cheat, of course, but if it’s a fair fight (which it never is except in rare cases like this duel) then it _stays_ a fair fight.

 

Then Jane’s not thinking about that anymore, because she’s _sure_ she didn’t move but she’s in front of Dave anyway.

 

Dirk jerks away so he doesn’t run her through, but twisting into the only open space left leaves him wide open for Caledscratch, and Dave’s already halfway through a downstroke and moving too quickly to stop and before Jane’s mind has quite caught up with the rest of her Dirk is bleeding out from the stump where his hand was a second ago.

 

She stares, and Dave stares, and she wants to say something but she’s still moving without conscious thought. She reaches out and rummages through Dirk’s sylladex, which she shouldn’t be able to do at all, and she decaptchalogues his quest bed, which- well, what? When did he even do that? _Why_ did he do that? She didn’t even think they _could_ do that.

 

Jane is probably in shock. She blames that for the way she doesn’t react anywhere near quick enough when the next thing she draws out of Dirk’s sylladex is her own quest bed.

 

Dave’s _still_ staring, because although it feels like years it’s only been seconds, and he might be in shock too because he moves a half second too slow to stop her when Jane draws her forkkind. Well past simple alarm now, Jane reaches out to the last person she can when she can’t force her voice to cooperate.

 

GG: AR!

AR: Sorry about this.

GG: wh

 

And that’s when Jane, without her conscious control or consent, stabs herself in the heart.

  
Dirk’s slumped onto his quest bed, thankfully, because she’s pretty sure she’s read that bleeding out after losing a limb takes a few minutes at most, and luckily Jane immediately lands on hers so hard she bounces.

 

She never truly remembers what happens next. Dave and later Rose and John tell her that’s normal. Right now she only knows that she’s in pain, and then she isn’t, and then she feels inexplicably like she could take the world on and win.

 

She risks a glance up. Dirk’s still on his bed, but hovering above it now, dressed ridiculously in what must be the Prince god tier outfit. His expression hasn’t changed, obviously, but he doesn’t seem upset. If anything, he seems satisfied as he inspects his hood. (She’s going to avoid mentioning the pantaloons as long as is humanly possible).

 

She glances down. Yes, she’s god tier too, happily with a more conservative outfit to show for it.

 

She looks at Dave, who’s put his sword away somewhere and is now looking not at her _or_ Dirk but at something between them.

 

Already feeling she’s going to regret this, Jane looks too.

 

She’s still wearing the tiaratop, naturally, and AR has found a way to make it project a hologram. He hovers in the empty space now, having opted to appear as Dirk but with red eyes and no shades, and a startled expression that’s bizarre on Dirk’s face.

 

His outfit is gold, not red, with the hood spiraling down past his waist that denotes an Heir and the symbol she’s become used to associating with Jake emblazoned across his chest.

 

“I have no idea what the fuck just happened,” Dave says, blankly.

 

“AR manipulated us into god tiering,” Jane replies, mind whirring to try and catch up. “He deprogrammed the mind control ability from my tiaratop, but _apparently_ he left himself some back doors in the code.”

 

Hologram AR shrugs at her. It’s such a normal gesture that it’s bizarre. “Didn’t exactly think you were all gonna leap at the idea without some prodding.”

  
Jane throws her hands up. “That does not make murder okay!”

 

“Well, you got better.” AR keeps inspecting himself, not seeming to get any more used to being god tier than she is. “And we have three more god tiers.”

 

“About that,” Dave breaks in, and points at AR. “What the fuck?”

 

AR shrugs again, looking a little lost. It’s kind of messing with Jane’s head to be seeing Dirk with facial expressions. “I don’t know, actually. I didn’t think I _could_ god tier. I was in Jane’s head when she died, though, and I guess- well, I always figured I was a Prince of Heart since _he_ is,” he jerks his head in Dirk’s direction, “But then, I never thought I’d go out while in someone else’s mind, either. Maybe the game tried to combine classes and aspects and this is the result.”

 

TT: Prince and Maid, Heart and Life.

TT: Yeah, I can see that. Not sure exactly how that gets interpreted as a mathematical equation, but I’m sure we aren’t aware of every nuance of how classes and aspects are determined.

 

AR’s hologram vanishes. Jane knows without needing to ask that it’s because the tiaratop only has so much processing power to spare.  She should really need to ask.  She should really take the tiaratop off, everything considered. 

 

But they _did_ need to god tier.

 

She's still not too happy about _how_ they got there, but she _is_ glad they got there.

 

AR: Let’s keep this between the four of us for now?

AR: This could be a huge advantage as a wildcard. Hope and Heir are both pretty powerful.

 

“Yeah,” Jane sighs out loud. “I don’t actually want to explain to Jake and Roxy how any of this happened as it is.”

 

AR: I appreciate that. Because Roxy would kill me.

 

“Yes,” Jane says. “That would be awful _. Wouldn’t it_.”

 

AR: Are you mad? You seem mad.

 

“Yes, AR, I’m mad. I’m definitely mad. At you. Because you just _mind-controlled me into_ _stabbing myself_. That was not a nice thing to do. I’ll get over it. Eventually. Probably. It’ll take a while. In the meantime,” she looks around the rooftop, “I am now really, really done. Why don’t we do what we actually came here for and all go get some sleep?”

 

It  takes some shuffling around.  Dave doesn't want to sleep on the futon for reasons he doesn't want to elaborate on, and they're all a bit weirded out by him sleeping on Dirk's bed with them, and he adamantly refuses the pile when he sees the smuppets, muttering something about 'war flashbacks.' 

 

Dirk and Jane always sleep back-to-back on the rare occasions it's just them. They settle on the bed after a while and Dave takes the floor against the entrance, using his cape as a makeshift blanket and insisting he doesn't need a pillow. It's almost alarming how reassuring it is to have him guarding the door. 

 

Though she knows AR wouldn’t blame her if she did, Jane still doesn’t take off her tiaratop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one: dammit ar
> 
> two: i have a twin and can make these comments, for the rest of you no we're not psychic quit asking, it's just really easy to know what someone who has literally been your best friend your entire life is thinking
> 
> three: daves lack of a pillow is cuz when i stayed over at my folks over the hols i slept on the game room futon and when i said 'nah i dont need a pillow i dont sleep with one normally anyway' my brothers both got all horrified and looked at each other and went 'like some kinda serial killer' (i actually have a pile of pillows that i do not use as pillows because i nest)
> 
> last: DAMMIT AR
> 
> post last: OH RIGHT ive been busy writing original stuff which is published now uh theres more info on my profile page um. final chapter note dirk and rox sleep back to back because my cat sleeps back to back with me for some weird cat reason of hers.


	7. Change Party Members

Jane’s trying to fall asleep, but she can’t stop thinking that there are still people they have to explain to in the morning.

 

Not about AR. As much as it galls her to admit it, he’s right; the fewer people that know of their extra god tier player, the bigger their potential advantage. But she and Dirk are still god tier now when they weren’t twelve hours ago and that’s… that’s not something she is looking forward to explaining.

 

AR is not helping. He keeps shuffling playlists and she doesn’t know if that’s something he always did or if it’s a new hobby but she can _hear_ him and ‘somewhere just beyond my reach there’s someone reachin’ back for me’ humming in the back of her brain is just _not helping_.

 

She’s staring intently at the wall and trying hard to ignore him when orange text scrawls vividly across her field of vision. It’s actually kind of a neat effect contrasted with the dark room but it’s also not conducive to sleep.

 

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 03:47 

 

TT: You could take the tiaratop off. 

GG: That would make communicating hard.

 

Dirk’s shoulders press against hers when he shifts slightly. His hand finds hers, too, but he only presses the backs of them together lightly.

 

TT: Not really.

TT: And Dave has had no problem.

TT: Jane…

TT: Do you not want to take it off? Or does AR not want to?

 

Dave has settled deceptively comfortably into his guard position against the door. Jane not only doubts he’s sleeping at all, she thinks he might actually be nocturnal, if only through some strange osmosis of troll culture. She catches herself wondering if those are Knight traits, or Strider traits, or just Dave ones, and wrenches her thoughts back to their original track. She really, really should take the tiaratop off.

 

Jane squeezes her eyes shut, but that doesn’t actually help since the tiaratop’s programming is capable of bypassing her sight entirely. Is capable of bypassing her _decisions_ entirely, she reminds herself savagely, but she still doesn’t move to take it off.

 

TT: Jane.

GG: I know.

TT: You can always put it back on.

 

Just prove you can take it off, she notices Dirk pointedly does _not_ add.

 

And then music cuts into her thoughts again, _sea without a shore for the banished one unheard, he lightens the beacon light at the end of world,_ and the decision is suddenly very, very easy.

 

Jane keeps her eyes shut and presses back hard against Dirk as she reaches up with her free hand and yanks the tiaratop off, setting it to the side so that she’s completely out of physical contact with it.

 

She’s hit with a wave of guilt at cutting off AR, but at least she knows it’s _her_ guilt.

 

She presses her hand back against Dirk’s hard and leaves the tiaratop where it is for the rest of the night.

 

It’s only when she wakes suddenly the next morning that Jane realizes no one actually bothered to make any concrete plans for the day, not so much as establishing a meeting place, which now seems like a glaring oversight. She’s alone in the room, so after a moment of hesitation over her tiaratop, she leaves it on the bed and heads for the kitchen. It’s Dirk’s place- AR has plenty of ways to interact here without needing her help.

 

Dirk’s perched comfortably on the counter, leaning back on his hands, as Dave rattles around in the cabinets and rambles endlessly. Jane has the sense that Dave is one of those people who just talks constantly, whether anyone is listening or not.

 

She had a couple of friends at school who were like that, but that’s a topic Jane veers sharply away from even _beginning_ to think about. It’s not like being a frequent assassination target hadn’t kept her from having many other friends, anyway, she tells herself harshly, before turning her attention back to Dirk and Dave.

 

It’s really, really strange to watch Dave in Dirk’s kitchen. He keeps doing things like pulling open the drawer next to the silverware drawer and catching himself a minute later, or absently reaching for cabinets that aren’t quite where he expects them to be, or, oddly, exercising extreme caution about opening the microwave and avoiding the fridge entirely.

 

“There’s some Spaghetti-O’s in that top left cabinet,” Jane finally offers quietly. “We’ve mostly been eating them cold, but we can go up to the roof and heat them up over a fire if you want.”

 

“Outside,” Dave replies immediately, tossing his head impatiently in a gesture that seems off to Jane until she realizes it’s an echo of something she’s already seen Karkat do. “I have had _enough_ of the indoors. Medium or not I’d really prefer outside, even over Strider stylings.” He adds that last with a nod towards Dirk that Jane almost wants to call gracious, if ‘Dave Strider’ and ‘gracious’ existed in the same universe.

 

_Well, technically, they don’t_ , she thought, and caught a near-hysterical giggle before it could escape. Her own ancestor (dancestor?) hadn’t even arrived yet, she couldn’t give in to hysteria yet. She probably couldn’t count on any chances to go have a nice quiet private breakdown in peace at all, but she should at _least_ be able to wait until after John was here.

 

Along with Jake’s grandfather-son and _their_ extra Strider.

 

Maybe she’d better make a point of having a private place in mind.

 

Jane does fetch her tiaratop from the bed before making her own way upstairs, and it’s only as she hears a few faint lines of music drift up the stairs that she realizes she hasn’t heard AR all morning.

 

For that matter, it could just be a radio switching on. Dirk does play music all the time himself. It wouldn’t be that unusual. Except that Dirk is outside already, and so is Dave, and it isn’t the kind of music she’s used to hearing from him (AR will play anything, Dirk is more discerning), and she hasn’t heard AR all morning.

 

_I am the voice of Never-Never land, the innocence the dreams of everyman, I am the empty crib of Peter Pan_ is all she hears before it’s silent again.

 

Jane clutches her tiaratop a little closer as she climbs to the roof.

 

It’s disconcerting when two white-blond heads twist to look at her in near identical gestures from where the two are hovering over breakfast, but Jane has adjusted to stranger things than this.

 

She hefts the tiaratop and looks at Dirk. He tilts his head and she can feel his gaze meeting hers, even if she can’t see it, and she tosses the tiaratop to him.

 

He nods at her and she knows she’ll get it back when it’s been _truly_ cleared of any unwanted features. It’s only then that Jane joins them around their tiny fire.

 

They’re only just finishing their breakfast (Jane’s standards for meals has dropped drastically, but she still feels like Dave should _not_ be looking so thrilled with Spaghetti-Os for breakfast) when they’re interrupted by the first arrivals.

 

Dave’s trolls.

 

Which makes sense, when she thinks about it later. Roxy and Rose probably aren’t yet done talking, she doubts Kanaya would have gone far from Rose, and Jake is _still_ nursing wounds and sulking, as far as she knows. Beyond all that, she’s seen Dave with his trolls, it’s clear how close they are.

 

Terezi is zooming around on mechanical dragon’s wings and promptly drops a muttering Karkat into their midst. Apparently anticipating this, Dave has already gone springing to his feet, but Karkat’s weight knocks him right back down and all the breath out of him besides anyway. Terezi lands nearby, cackling.

 

As soon as both trolls are on the roof, Dave relaxes the way Dirk does when all of their own group is together. In the same instant, although she doesn’t know how obvious it is, Dirk tenses.

 

“I don’t know if I ever did do proper introductions,” Dave groans, pushing ineffectually at Karkat. Karkat does roll off him, cursing the whole way, but only to stay right at his side and glare at everything and everyone in the immediate vicinity. “Jane, Dirk, my matesprits, Terezi and Karkat. Terezi, Karkat, our dancestors, Jane and Dirk.”

 

Karkat claws himself upright, shakes himself like a wet dog, and with a single spearing glance towards the rest of them says shortly, “No Gamzee, no fucking surprise. No Mayor- _that_ was a fucking surprise. Asshole’s gone.”

 

“Shit,” Dave says, wincing. “Hope he’s okay. _Not_ great at keeping an eye out for himself,” he adds for Dirk and Jane’s benefit.

 

“So,” Terezi says. “While we were failing at our mission, what did you lot accomplish?”

 

Dave blinks slowly, tilts his head towards Jane and Dirk, then tilts it back towards the trolls.

 

“Son of a bitch,” Karkat says fervently. “How is it _all_ the humans manage to hit fucking god tier?”

 

Dave swats at him, but slowly, for Dave. “Shut up and help us plan.”

 

“ _Why_? Do you _remember_ my plans? Do you remember _Terezi’s_ plans? Do you remember what happened as soon as Egbert or Lalonde got involved in _anyone’s_ plans?”

 

“Wow,” Dave deadpans. “Not one curse in there.”

 

“No shit, jackass, I’m fucking serious here.”

 

“Knew it couldn’t last.” Dave folds his arms under his head and then eyes Jane and Dirk sideways. “You guys know this terrain better. Any chance of setting up an ambush?”

 

“We’d need bait for an ambush,” Jane is compelled to point out, though she’s fascinated enough by the interaction between Dave and the trolls that she’d have been content to just watch a bit longer. Dirk is on edge, though, too close to aliens who have historically been his enemies, and Jane wordlessly moves closer to him as she speaks. “I don’t think an enemy who can cause widespread destruction is one we really _can_ ambush.”

 

“Shit.” Karkat exhales noisily. “That’s basically what Lalonde said, but I was still holding out some hope. Fuckin’ stupid of me.”

 

Rolling his eyes, Dave says, “It’s been three years _and_ there are two Lalondes. You can use our first names, already.”

 

Karkat serenely ignores him, or at least in a way Jane suspects is serenely for Karkat. “Any other ideas?”

 

Terezi’s unseeing gaze roves over them, and she smiles sharp and sudden in a way that shows way too many teeth when she sees the way Dirk is even now fiddling with the tiaratop. “I have a few. A human saying I learned from Rose was, How do you beat a grandmaster at chess?”

 

“Make him play Calvinball,” Dave and Jane completed together, and there was a moment of stunned silence on the rooftop.

 

“You already scratched the game once, and look how fucking well that turned out,” Karkat argued, but weakly.

 

Dave eyed him, looked around, and eyed him again pointedly.

 

Terezi was nodding. “Scratching is a hard reset. We’ll have to talk to Rose more, but there are some games that have a _soft_ reset. We don’t know what difference that makes to the Game- but it’s worth trying to find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this has been the reason for the name (and the chapter titles, for that matter) from the beginning. Obviously there's more to it, but the idea of soft resetting the game was the seed the AU part started from.


	8. Game Settings

Dave rolls his eyes and drops back to his haunches, looking up at Terezi over his reclaimed meal and ignoring Karkat for the moment. “All right. But if it's gonna have to wait for John's lot before we can implement it anyway, then we can let it rest for another ten, twenty minutes while we actually eat breakfast.” He tilts his bowl in Karkat's direction without taking his eyes off Terezi, shakes it once, and intones, “Food, Karkat. Actual food, not your shitty grubloaf.” He drops the bowl back down to spread his arms theatrically and add, “And real beds. They have real beds, here, not bookcases and tapestries and shit. I've slept in a pile more than a bed, last three years.”

 

Jane can feel her eyebrows inching steadily higher. “You didn't even sleep in the bed.”

 

“Singular,” Terezi says smugly, and _leers_.

 

“The _point_ is that they exist, not whether I used them,” Dave says smoothly, almost managing to avoid Karkat's attention.

 

Almost. “You're doing the not-sleeping again, aren't you,” Karkat says grimly, crossing his arms and tapping one foot in a gesture so human it takes Jane off guard for a second. Which is stupid, because hasn't she been thinking about Dave and Rose's troll traits all along? Somehow, naively, she simply hadn't expected the reverse to apply.

 

Groaning, Dave rolls his shoulders. “Dude. It's been one night. It doesn't qualify as the 'not-sleeping-thing' until night three. Rose had terms drawn up and everything.”

 

Jane is distracted from this fascinating glimpse into the new arrival's lives by Dirk tapping her with the tiaratop. She raises an eyebrow at him, thinking it was awfully fast, and is met with a raised brow back. Of course, Dirk's ill at ease with half the people up here trolls and his own ability to communicate severely compromised.

 

Well, not that severely, she thinks a moment later when a frisson of understanding rolls through her. The two of them haven't had any trouble.

 

Of course, that won't last if either troll decides to address Dirk directly. Probably. She doesn't know them well enough yet to know if they're likely to push or to just let matters go and go back to speaking with Dave instead. She'd really rather not find out, at least not now.

 

But she does have something else she has to do, except she can't leave Dirk here while she does it; not with the way he's keeping a steady eye on the trolls and a steady hand near his katana. She's lived him with him long enough to know the signs by now.

 

She keeps her voice as steady as he is as she takes a deep breath and says, “We really should go check on Jake. He hasn't been checking in as regularly.”

 

Dirk's flinch isn't really a noticeable thing, more a kind of instant where he's entirely still before reviving, but Jane has trained herself to see it.

 

“Do you want us to come with?” Dave says immediately. Jane has a flash of something more vulnerable than she'd expected, a needing to help that doesn't seem entirely normal or healthy, and shakes her head hard to try and shake off the unwanted insights with it. If this is a God Tier power, she's not sure she _wants_ it. Insight into the lives and motives of those around her might have been appealing, once, but now it strikes her more as a curse than an asset. This is the first time, too, she sees a true echo of their own Dave Strider in this Dave- an echo of an anguish at an _inability_ to help, a mirror of that haunting unplayed video- and it unsettles her more deeply than she expects.

 

And, too, she'd like to cling to that original shining vision of their ancestors for just a little while longer. It's _going_ , shredding like fog in sunlight, but it's not yet _gone_ , and she doesn't want to give it over until she has to for the same reason she wouldn't abandon a raft in a stormy sea.

 

That’s not a happy thought, either.

 

Dave is still waiting for an answer. “No, we'd better go alone. You can stay here if you'd like.” She feels comfortable enough with Dirk and AR's desires and dislikes by now to offer that without worry.  

 

Speaking of AR. Jane fumbles the tiaratop back on while Dave is looking back at his trolls and saying something too low to make out- she's going to have to readjust to that, _quiet_ is not a word that applies to Jake and Roxy.

 

arovetRosseau [AR] began pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG]  at 04:15

 

AR: Are you there?

AR: Are you there, Jane? It's me, auto-responder.

AR: Hello?

AR: Hello?

AR: Hello?

AR: Okay, I get it. I shouldn't have done it. Sorry.

AR: Jane?

AR: hello

 

arovetRosseau [AR] ceased pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 06:52

 

arovetRosseau [AR] began pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 07:15

 

AR: Have I mentioned yet that I'm sorry?

AR: Damn.

 

arovetRosseau [AR] ceased pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 08:47

 

Somehow, she hadn't thought he'd react this way. Dirk wouldn't have, precisely, but AR was not Dirk. He had taken long enough to prove that to her that forgetting it was unacceptable.

 

gutsyGumshoe [GG] began pestering arovetRosseau [AR] at 09:30

 

GG: Hello.

GG: I'm sorry, Dirk had the tiaratop.

GG: AR?

 

She gets the sense he's sulking, though with AR she can't know for sure.

 

GG: I'm not apologizing for being upset, although I do accept your apology.

GG: I have to be able to trust that my actions are _my actions_ , especially now, when the Game can move forward again.

GG: Are you there?

 

She realises how absolutely insane her unintended echo comes across the second after she sends it. By then, of course, with his unerring sense of when he can be the best irritant, AR has responded.

 

AR: Where else would I be?

AR: Off frolicking in the woods with all my damn friends?

 

Jane winces, but doesn't rise to the bait. Yes, she's shouldered guilt not her own on behalf of her friends, but she knows and accepts that, and she won't let AR lay more on her shoulders. In this, she is not at fault, and she _knows_ it, viscerally.

 

GG: Pestering the others, using any of the devices in the apartment you used to use constantly, doing whatever research you do when we're all asleep. You don't sleep, you've filled empty hours for three years without a moirail. You don't get an apology for _tricking me to my death._

AR: It's not as though it was a permanent death. I would never do that.

GG: I believe you, but I had trusted you not to do it at all, and you abused that trust.

AR: I won't do it again.

GG: Because you won't do it again, or because you can't do it again?

GG: I've forgiven you some, or we wouldn't be talking, but I need you to realize that isn't the sort of thing you can do without consulting me.

AR: It wouldn't have worked if I'd consulted you.

GG: And maybe we could have come up with a different solution that could. You need to discuss these things with me.

 

There's a long enough pause that she thinks it's likely he really is turning that over. Considering she knows how fast he can think, she knows how thoroughly.

 

AR: I will. 

GG: Good. Now we need to go find Jake.

 

That pause was the longest point in the conversation, the rest of it effortlessly quick with the tampered tiaratop, so it hasn't been long enough for Dirk to get impatient. Jane nods at him and they both disappear down the stairs, leaving Dave with his trolls.

 

Dirk doesn't relax even after leaving the trolls behind. Jane sighs.

 

“Look,” she says gently, knowing the tone isn't likely to matter but unable to help it. She’s selfishly glad enough as it is knowing she’s not as hard for him to understand as the others are (though she wonders, now, with Dave). “I know you don't want to see Jake right now, but he's not acting normal even for him, and I would rather not leave you around strange trolls while I check on him, any more than you would me. I can drop you off at Roxy's if you want, but from the way she was with her mother I didn't think you would want that.”

 

Dirk shifts closer to her side with a shake of his head, falling into step with her. Jane feels again a furtive guilt over the relief that she’s still easiest for him to understand out of them all. Because Roxy should be here with her moirail, and she isn’t, and Jane can’t even hold it against her when she knows what meeting her mom(daughter) means to Roxy. But at the same time, the number of people in her friend’s world has just more than doubled literally overnight, and it’s Dirk that strangers are most overwhelming for. AR had a point, before, that in becoming his moirail Jane has also inadvertently become a sort of stand-in moirail for Dirk. Right now, she isn’t what he needs, but she’s what he _has_.

 

And Jake has no kind of moirail at all. Once, Jane wouldn’t have counted that a loss. She’s surprised to find how much it saddens her now. Maybe he’ll have someone in the next group to arrive.

 

Jane already knows she won’t have the kind of connection to John that Roxy does to Rose, or Dirk to Dave- but she also knows too well the history that creates that connection and she cannot, _cannot_ feel jealous.

 

Jake is sitting on the steps of his broken bedroom when they arrive, twisting something over and over in his hands and staring at it. When Jane clears her throat and he looks up at them, flashing the barest shadow of his usual grin, she can see it’s- something robotic, something she thinks is a memento of his grandmother, because it doesn’t have Dirk’s usual flair to it.

 

Dirk hovers uncomfortably behind her as she approaches, unwilling to move either closer or farther away. For now, and promising herself privately she’ll avoid doing it as much as possible, Jane ignores him.

 

“Jake,” she says gently. “You haven’t been checking in.”

 

He opens his mouth, looks behind her to Dirk, and shuts his mouth again. There’s something desperate and sad in his eyes and Jane sighs and says, “Dirk? Can you guard the door while we go talk inside?”

 

She feels the nod more than she hears it.

 

Jake shows no inclination to move. Jane grabs his upper arm and pulls him after her to the relative safety of his bedroom. Once there, she says aloud, “AR, I’m going to cut you off for a moment. Keep an eye on Dirk? And maybe make sure Rose and Roxy aren’t burning the house down or something if you can.”

 

Ignoring Jake’s baffled stare, Jane waits and gets an affirmative back (she mostly believes him), and it’s only then she crosses to sit on the bed and pat the seat beside her until Jake finally gets the idea to join her.

 

“So he went to you after all,” Jake mumbles after a long time. The silence isn’t uncomfortable for Jane, but she senses it might be for him, so she restrains her response as best she can.

 

“Jake, Dirk’s gayer than Richard Simmons singing a duet with Elton John,” Jane says flatly, and sighs at his bewildered look. “He didn’t _come to me_. I’m filling in for Roxy’s moirail duties, _she_ ran off to spend time with her mother. Daughter. Dancestor.” Oh man, troll words were starting to make sense. Jane doubted she was going to escape the culture blend much longer.

 

“So… you’re not here to…” Jake says unsteadily, and trails off.

 

Jane decides she doesn’t really need him to finish that sentence. “I’m here to tell you we need you back with us, you absolute goofball. I know you’re hurting, and I know Dirk’s clingy, and I know you’re both moping _don’t give me that look you are_ , and seriously if Dirk is still half as clingy as AR I feel your pain, but _we all need you_.” She pauses to breathe and looks him in the eyes. “It’s going to be our ancestors next, and we’re better equipped to handle them because we have a generational buffer. We need to- to-“ She rubs a hand across her brow. “Dirk’s doing well enough with Dave now, but we need to get Roxy. She’s obsessing.”

 

Jane doesn’t think she deserves the look that earns her.

 

“Dangerously so,” Jane says wryly. “Believe me, this is making Dirk look mild.”

 

The horrified look she _does_ understand.

 

She makes sure Dirk is truly out of earshot for this next bit, just in case, and lowers her voice. “And Dirk needs our help translating. They’re going to find out eventually, but it’s pretty obvious Dirk doesn’t want to tell them.”

 

Now Jake’s startled. “Tell them… tell them what?

Which, of course, is how Jane finds herself trapped into explaining Dirk’s aphasia to Jake.

 

“But that means that I- that he- that, that I-no- galloping gargoyles, Jane, I’ve been a fool,” Jake moans, dropping his head into his hands. “He- of course he wanted to keep talking- I need to talk to him- no, wait, that’s…”

 

“Don’t you dare treat him differently,” Jane says, sharper than she intends to. “You have computers. You have messaging programs. _Use_ them.”

 

“Right… right. He’s outside, you say?”

 

Jake barely waits for her affirmative before rushing down the stairs. Sighing, Jane reclines on the bed. Nothing to do now but hurry up and wait, she thinks morosely. Nothing to preoccupy her but to worry about John’s impending arrival.

 

Nothing but her moirail, she realizes, and with a dawning smile she reactivates the tiaratop’s chat.

 

arovetRosseau [AR] began pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 07:15

AR: Honey, I’m home. 

GG: You know what, I think we need a feelings jam.

AR: I am all electronic equivalents of ears.

GG: I knew I could count on you.

 

He’s not forgiven, not truly or entirely, but they’re definitely back on familiar footing.


	9. GameFAQS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because they are about to become relevant, Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics for those yet unfamiliar:
> 
> 1)A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.  
> 2)A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.  
> 3)A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

AR:… and that’s why your daemon would be a rabbit. A very fluffy rabbit.

GG: You do realise I lost the thread of this entirely somewhere around ten minutes ago. And yet, no. No it wouldn’t. That much I’m reasonably sure of. First, you can’t just pick the first animal you vaguely associate with someone and say that would be their daemon, that’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of what they are.

AR: Wait, didn’t you say you never read these books?

GG: SECONDLY, I would not be a rabbit. None of us would be a rabbit. Rabbits are known for procreation, and we weren’t even properly born!

AR: I wonder if that means none of us would even have daemons, rendering this argument moot.

GG: We live in a post-apocalyptic game world now. All arguments are moot.

GG: Okay, it’s been like two hours. Do we think it’s safe to check on them now?

AR: We think we should wait another half an hour or so for Dave to get jittery, come check, and be scarred by the sight of his ancestor making out with Jade’s.

GG: _We_ do not!

AR: Oh, come on, you know you want to see if he visibly freaks out. I think he will. And I want to see it. And I know you do, too.

 

Jane actually kind of did, if only because she was rather fascinated by any Strider displaying emotions well enough for her to read them- well, excepting AR through a hologram, because that was mostly just disturbing- but she didn’t have to admit to any of that. Even if AR probably really did know.

 

She still doesn’t know how much or how well AR might have integrated into her mind while he had unfiltered access to it. She trusts Dirk’s fixes to the tiaratop unfailingly- but AR had already had several hours to manipulate a one-way psychic link, processed faster than she could dream of thinking, and was _at least_ as competent as Dirk, given that he _was_ Dirk plus years of programming and experience. If there was the remotest chance of a workaround, he’d have found it.

 

And if he had, would she know? AR had been so casually insidious, she hadn’t even noticed he was influencing her right up until it had been impossible to ignore.

 

That was all speculation. Thing was, AR also had the kind of near-eidetic memory only being mostly-machine could bring. Whether or not there were still any remnants of an active link (and Jane wasn’t altogether sure she _wanted_ to know if there were) AR was perfectly capable of remembering what Jane’s mind and thoughts were like.

 

AR: I wonder if it’ll even take a full half hour. This Dave Strider seems a lot more inclined to do things like check on people than I’d been expecting…

GG: ‘This’ Dave and ‘this’ Rose are phrases that are going to get old fast, aren’t they?

AR: Seems so. I wouldn’t like to encourage inaccuracy. Do you hear something?

GG: No, I… wait, do you? How would-

 

She realized she actually could hear voices from downstairs.

 

“Uh, hey, I don’t mean to be pushy or anything, but- _arrrrghhh my virgin eyes!”_

A reddish blur abruptly shot past Jane’s seat on the bed, frantically chanting something about brain bleach.

 

Karkat follows him much more leisurely, although Jane gets the distinct impression the troll never really moves slowly. She wouldn’t want to test his reflexes, that’s for sure. “For fuck’s sake, Strider, there is no way you have _ever_ had virgin eyes.”

 

“ _There are still things they were not meant to see!”_

 

“I don’t even think _I_ had virgin eyes after seeing your childhood,” Karkat continues, acknowledging Jane with a look before turning to study the movie posters with some interest.

 

Then what he said catches up to her and she winces, deciding this is something she’d _definitely_ rather not know.

 

“Well _I_ have virgin eyes,” Terezi declares, sauntering in last.

 

Janes, blinks, opens her mouth at the same time as Terezi smirks and starts to say something else, and Dave cuts in with a flat, “’Rezi’s blind.”

 

“Dave!” Terezi groans. “Don’t you want me to have _any_ fun?”

 

“Hey, I only told the sensible one. There’re still four others you can mess with. Karkat, for the love of… you and John mainly, I guess, get _away_ from the Avatar poster. We’ve been over this, _no_.”

 

“It’s a brilliant movie,” Karkat argues, even as he moves to another poster.

 

“It’s Pocahontas for furries and you know it.” Dave drops onto the bed next to Jane, casually maintaining the perfect distance to prevent the mattress dipping them towards each other. “How long have those two been out there, and how much longer should we be hiding in here?”

 

“Roughly two hours, and I worked out it’s probably safest to wait for one of them to actually come back in here,” Jane said. “And that’s three left Terezi can mess with, AR’s here.”

 

AR’s synthetic voice buzzed out of the nearest computer. “I’m like Big Brother with less morals.”

 

“Fan- fucking-tastic.” Karkat looks around, clearly decides that’s already too many people on the bed, and takes up a position on the floor next to Dave’s perch. Terezi doesn’t join them, choosing to continue inspecting the room instead.

 

Dave groans. “I just realized. Bro- uh, Dirk. Dirk didn’t bother with the Three Laws, did he?”

 

Jane, who’d looked up Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics specifically for this reason, replied dryly, “Well we’ve seen him break all three at once, so no.”

 

“I didn’t break the third one,” AR protests from a different computer.

 

“Oh believe me, you did,” Jane assures him. “Your safety was in _immediate_ danger for at least the next few minutes after that little stunt.” She glances at Dave. “You don’t seem that surprised.”

 

He shrugs. “I know Bro- Dirk. He wouldn’t have seen the need to include any programming that risked losing the Game.”

 

“No, you don’t,” AR says from the first computer again.

 

There’s a pause.

 

“Know Dirk,” AR clarifies. “You don’t know Dirk. You know _a_ Dirk. Different iterations of the same person are not, in fact, the same person. I should know.”

 

There’s a longer pause.

 

“Well,” Dave says slowly. “The apartment’s still full of robots and creepy puppets, he still doesn’t talk, and I would guess the only reason there aren’t traps littered around are that there’s no one to spring them.”

 

This pause wins the prize.

 

“Wait, back up, what?” Jane says at last.

 

“Robots and creepy puppets?”

 

“No, after that!”

 

“Random traps for the unwary?” Dave actually punctuates this with a suspicious glance around, despite it being Jake’s room.

 

“No, in the _middle_ ,” Jane says, exasperated.

 

“He… doesn’t talk?” Dave blinks. She’s gotten so used to Dirk, she can tell through the shades. “Really? Traps and robots and puppets and _that’s_ what you focus on?”

 

“Okay,” Jane says, flopping backwards and risking Dave rolling towards her. He doesn’t, balance impeccable. She’d suspected. “Important question. Bro _didn’t_ talk, or Bro _couldn’t_ talk?”

 

From his spot on the floor, Karkat tilts his head up and stares at her. Terezi turns from the poster she’d been licking and does the same, except a few inches to the left.

 

“I… had always assumed didn’t,” Dave says slowly. “I mean, the dude filmed puppet porn and held regular rooftop strifes, and it’s not like I was gonna _ask_. I just figured maybe he’d taken some badass ninja puppeteer vow of silence.”

 

“Why wouldn’t you ask?” Jane said, baffled.

 

“Why _would_ I ask?” Dave countered. “It’s just what he was _like_. It’s not like I had much to compare it to.”

 

Jane started to ask about his friends offline, thought better of it, and switched gears. “So… okay, how did Bro communicate?”

 

“Strifes,” Dave said dryly. “And traps. Notes, sometimes. Though those usually meant more traps… we _did_ use some on-the-fly sort of sign language sometimes, but I don’t think it was the sort of thing that really _counts_ as sign, and honestly, we mostly just didn’t _have_ conversations.” His brows furrowed over his shades. “Why is this so important to you?”

 

“Well,” Karkat said from the floor, startling Jane, who’d nearly forgotten he was there. He’s a loud troll, yes, but he _moves_ quiet. Like Dave, actually. “You asked if he didn’t or _couldn’t_ right away, so. Your Dirk…?”

 

“No swears,” Dave muttered and got headbutted in the knee with a blunt horn for his trouble.

 

Jane took a deep breath. She didn’t expect to be doing this twice today. “He can’t. Never learned, not growing up alone in that apartment; he didn’t have anyone to learn _from_. And, uh, he has trouble with understanding spoken words, too. Especially colloquialisms, or rapid speech. He can write and read fine- better than the rest of us, really- but not speak.”

 

After flinching badly, and far more noticeably than she’d thought likely, Dave said in a small voice, “I didn’t… uh, that is. Dave didn’t have, like, contingency plans for that?”

 

Karkat snorted. “Like you’ve never forgotten to have those.”

 

“Hey,” Dave said, sharply enough that Karkat subsided and Terezi found another interesting poster to lick. (You know what, Jane wasn’t even going to ask). “Even if, uh, Dave didn’t, he had Rose. _A_ Rose. Rose wouldn’t have forgotten. _Any_ Rose,” he adds with a pointed look at one of the computers.

 

“He tried!” Jane broke in, unwittingly echoing what Dirk had told her, even as she stored away that information about Rose. “There was this video full of language skills, it was set to autoplay when Dirk was little. It just… never played.”

 

“Okay,” Dave says, after a few uncomfortable minutes. “I can teach you guys what signs we _did_ use. I mean, we didn’t use it much, and we didn’t have a lot of signs, and the bits of it that are actual ASL are really pretty bastardized, but it’s something. I think some of it was actually, like, military hand signals, but it’s something.”

 

“Something is good,” Jane agreed. “It’s better than nothing.”

 

Terezi snickered. No one paid her any attention.

 

“Any chance in hell your Dirk knows any signs of his own?” Karkat asked, absently stretching out a foot to try and trip Terezi. She dodged, nimbly.

 

“Not likely,” Jane admitted. “He didn’t really have a way to learn any body language, either.”

 

Dave winces. “Puppets and robots.”

 

“Couldn’t he have learned some from movies?” Terezi asked, licking the poster for Avatar again. She seems to like that one; Dave might be doomed to watch it after all.

 

Jane shakes her head. “It isn’t the same, not for us humans. We really have to have actual experience with body language or it just comes off kind of wrong.”

 

“Wait, really?” Terezi says. “Huh. Weird.”

 

“Schoolfeeds,” Karkat and Dave say together before Jane can even form the question. Karkat continues, “It’s really fucking unsafe for trolls, even young trolls, to be too close to each other physically. Most of us are… violent. Really fucking violent. Especially highbloods to lowbloods.”

 

She decides not to ask the questions that raises, either, choosing instead to finally go with, “Uh, Terezi? Why do you keep _licking_ things?”

 

“Ha!” Dave crows. “Karkat, you owe me five cigars, she _did_ ask first.”

 

“Fuck, I was _sure_ it’d be the Lalonde of the group,” Karkat mumbles as he stretches to drop… presumably some kind of money into Dave’s outstretched hand. Okay then. Jane doesn’t see what good _any_ kind of money is likely to do any of them these days, but sure.

 

“It’s how I see!” Terezi exclaims, which isn’t actually much of an explanation, and proceeds to lick Dave’s cape. “Red is my favourite.”

 

“You know what, never mind,” Jane says faintly. “We still don’t have a plan for when we meet back up with Roxy and Rose. And Kanaya.”

 

Karkat twisted his neck back to look at her funny. “…Jake?”

 

“Don’t think he noticed,” Jane said dryly. “He can be a little.. oblivious sometimes.”

 

All three of them snorted and Karkat muttered, “John. Fuck.”

 

Jane groaned. “ _He’s_ oblivious.”

 

“Incredibly fucking so,” Dave and Karkat immediately say together, before giving each other annoyed looks.

 

“You know,” AR drawls from his chosen computer, “has anyone else noticed we’re _still_ waiting?”

 

“And I’m _still_ not going out there,” Dave shoots back immediately. “I don’t need to see that!”

 

“You’ve already seen it.”

 

“And I don’t need to see it _again_ ,” Dave retorts, pushing off the bed to pace. “Now what? Do I start teaching you three signs right now, or do we have something else to do?”

 

“I found some kind of primitive gaming system over here,” Terezi offers.

 

It’s Karkat’s turn to push himself to his feet. “That works for me. Have fun with your silent tongue fuckery.” He stops, then groans. “And that was a shit-fucking terrible choice of words. ‘Rezi, what’ve you got?”

 

Dave rolls his eyes and retreats to the bed again. “It’s an N64. With one game, looks like. Have at it.”

 

He doesn’t bother telling the two how the system works, instead resettling himself on the bed with Jane, snagging a computer on the way. “Right, while they’re doing that, you and AR are going to learn some signs.”

 

atlantisRiven [AR] began pesteringgutsyGumshoe [GG] at 09:36

atlantisRiven [AR] began pestering turntechGodhead[TG] at 09:36

 

AR: Wait, why am I learning them?

 

The red text flashes across her vision and presumably Dave’s shades, quite deliberately underscoring the point.

 

“You’ve got visuals, don’t you?” Dave resumes lounging on the bed and starts signing as he speaks, though not all the words have signs and not all the signs make contextual sense. At least, not yet. “Commit these to your memory banks, bro.”

 

Meanwhile, Karkat and Terezi fuss over the game controller, having found only the one single-player game. They end up deciding to adhere to the ‘die, pass the controller’ rule.

 

Karkat’s going to get the majority of the playtime.

 

They pass quite a while like this, with occasional interjections in the direction of the video game.

 

“What does that one mean? The… chest-thump thing?

 

“Loosely, ‘I’ve got your back, bro.’”

 

“I thought this game was for wigglers! Did I just kill my gogdamn lusus!”

 

“No, Terezi, your other left. No, not- look, just go _around_ the skeletons, okay, they don’t stop til daylight- okay, Karkat’s turn.”

 

AR: There’s no way those were real signs.

 

“They’re not. But they _did_ get used when we played video games.”

 

“ _Fuck_ damn it, Dave, you couldn’t have told me it was a _fucking volcano!_ ”

 

“Dude, calm your horns. It’s called Death Mountain and has a halo of smoke and ash, I kinda thought you’d work it out.”

 

At some point AR gave up entirely on learning any hand signs and started abusing the computer speakers to play his own soundtrack instead. “They say we are what we are but we don’t have to be, I’m bad behavior but I do it in the best way-“

 

“…This sign means duck, this one’s for go left-“

 

“Are there fucking bones in this well? Is that _blood_? Is this entire town getting its drinking water from some kind of _ancient fucking torture chamber_!”

 

“-We could be immortals, immortals, just not for long, for long-

 

“And this sign means _holy shit what the fuck was that!”_

 

That last bit’s not a sign (well, mostly, a couple parts of it _do_ appear to have associated signs). That last bit is a reaction to an absolutely overwhelming noise from outside, a noise that causes a noticeably ruffled Dirk and Jake to bolt into the room with them, Jake with a look of alarm on his face, barely controlled chaos breaking down into disorganized chaos,

 

“They’re here,” Jake says hoarsely. “They’re here. A battleship just crashed into the beach.”

 

Jane swallowed, hard. Time to meet her maker, a lot more literally than she’d ever thought. “Well. Let’s go introduce ourselves.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for delays, they occur because my life is insane. I work fifty hour weeks, I have some serious medical problems, I have close relatives in the hospital, and I try to make time to work on my original fiction as well since, you know, mortgages are a thing. Hopefully the next delay won't be as long- I'm not quite over the hump, but I'm at least on the side I can start sliding down.


	10. Insert Disc 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay. Work's been a bit more of an adventure than is usual lately, and there was a death in the family. I have every intention of continuing this- I actually have a quite a bit written that happens later on, it's a matter of getting there.

“Well, they already know me,” Dave points out. He’s still signing, but now Jane has absolutely no idea which sign goes with what and several words don’t have signs at all. “So one of you should go first.”

 

Dave’s still the one who hops off the bed and heads out of the room, drawing the others in his wake in a way that seems to come easily to him. The stairs are really better for going single-file, but they pair off anyway, Dave and Terezi, Dirk and Jake, and Jane and Karkat bringing up the rear. Jane finds she’s more comfortable with Karkat than Terezi so far- she’s surprisingly comfortable with Karkat, to be honest- so she’s all right with this arrangement.

 

AR: That makes no sense.

 

“Dave,” Karkat groans, speeding up a little.  Jane finds herself speeding up to match. “Just go talk to him.”

 

“I’m not going to and you can’t make me.”

 

“ _Yes I can_.”

 

“What’s the problem? I thought you and John had been friends for years,” Jane says at last, puzzled. They’ve gotten outside and fanned out a bit now. By the pattern of broken trees and the general area the sound came from, she thinks John’s group probably landed their battleship about as well as Dave’s did their meteor. Meteors not generally being considered vehicles, this is saying something.

 

“It isn’t John he’s freaking about,” Terezi says from where she’s sidled up _right_ next to Jane. Seriously, both she and Karkat are loud trolls, but they move so _silently._ Jane would have thought herself prepared for that after Dirk, but evidently she was wrong- Dirk is only one person, and is someone she knows, and is a close enough friend that she’s usually aware of where he is on some level. Terezi and Karkat, and presumably Kanaya, are different.

 

_Maybe that won’t last._

 

Jane shakes her head, hard, but the thought’s already been had.  After all, she doesn’t think Roxy and Dirk are going to be willing to let their ancestor/descendants go now they’ve met them, and Dave and Terezi and Karkat are very clearly as much a package deal as Jane, Dirk, Roxy and Jake themselves are. Probably Kanaya and Rose are the same.

 

She’d better get herself used to the trolls. If the groups their ancestors and trolls have formed are anything like the bond they themselves have, no one’s going to be willingly parted. Unwillingly, _maybe_ , but even that’s only happening after some intensely vicious fighting.

 

The abused trees give way to a long gouge in the beach- and the golden battleship, gleaming like a beacon, anchored just off shore.

 

She sincerely hopes it’s anchored.

 

“Who are you so worked up about, then?” Jake says, quieter than usual.  Even with Dirk back he’s still acting strangely subdued. Jane winces as she automatically runs through likely reasons for it in her head.

 

“His sprite,” Karkat says, roughly knocking his shoulder into Dave’s. It’s really impossible to tell which of the three of them have picked up which habits from each other. That _looks_ like a human gesture, but it’s just violent enough to be a troll one. Maybe both species do it. “Davesprite’s him. Well, he’s Dave plus three years and four months, anyway. And those four months are Terezi’s fault.”

 

Terezi crosses her arms (okay, that one is _definitely_ more human than troll) and sniffs. “I didn’t mean to kill John. And it didn’t actually _happen_. _And_ I apologized.” She eyes Dave. “It hasn’t bothered you.”

 

“Firstly, it didn’t happen to me, but it _did_ happen to him,” Dave says, voice low. “And secondly, different iterations of the same person are not, in fact, the same person.” He eyes Jane’s tiaratop as he says it.

 

AR: Oh no you don’t. You leave me out of this. I didn’t get any of Dirk’s friends murdered.

 

“No, because _you_ went ahead and cut out the middleman,” Jane says dryly, causing Jake to do a quick double-take and finally notice herself and Dirk’s attire. He still doesn’t say anything about it, though, eyes darting between them briefly but returning inexorably to the beach, where the battleship is gouging a line in the sand. It looks like the crew has decided to eschew anchoring after all in favor of ponderously crashing into the beach.  Jane’s not even surprised at this point.   

 

The battleship groans its way deliberately up the beach, gouging an impressive line nearly to the tree line, before grinding to a shuddering halt as sand sprays up around the bow.

 

A ramp thuds down from the side.

 

Jane only realizes her breathing has sped up when Roxy lands lightly beside her and presses close to her side. Rose and Kanaya have arrived too, but they’ve gone to Dave.

 

And Roxy does literally land, because she’s in full God Tier mode now.

 

When they look at each other, Roxy holds Jane’s gaze for a moment, then breaks out into a grin and says, “I won’t ask if you don’t.”

 

Jane snorts and turns back to the battleship. She doesn’t want to explain either, so it can wait.

 

She didn’t expect it to be the same as Dave and Rose’s arrival, but she still doesn’t expect the full-throated yelling as Jade and John burst out of the doors and half-charge, half-tumble down the ramp, barreling unceremonially into the middle of their huddle. Dirk’s startled backwards and drawn his sword faster than she can blink, she thinks Roxy made an aborted move to draw her gun, and even Jake flinches just before Jade tackles him.

 

Jane wants to say something, like maybe ‘be careful’ or just ‘wait’- it isn’t like she can _summarize_ her friend’s reactions to touch- but then John tackles _her_ and sends them both rolling through the sand.

 

It’s not pleasant. There’s sand in her hair, in her clothes, in her mouth. It’s flying everywhere, and John is talking a mile a minute, and Jane can’t stop laughing.

 

She was wrong. She’s glad John is here. She’s so, so glad. He feels like someone just for her, and knowing that’s not at all true doesn’t stop her feeling it.

 

Dave helps. Already, he helps, and so, surprisingly, do his trolls. They’ve felt like the first breath of normalcy for Jane in far too long. She doesn’t know about Rose and Kanaya yet.

 

But it was never her Dave was here for and she knew it. Dave is here for Dirk, and Karkat and Terezi are here for Dave, and she still barely knows Rose and Kanaya.

 

Not that she knows John yet either, but he’s rolled off to land on his back beside her, and she thinks the way he’s still chattering through exuberant laughter is a good sign.

 

She shifts closer to him almost automatically and John dramatically throws an arm over her. “Nanna! It’s so good to meet you!”  He pauses. “This version of you.”

 

_Wait. What?_

 

She’s distracted from _that_ particular non sequitur when she twists her head to look around and her gaze falls on Dave again.

 

He’s got Karkat hovering protectively at his back, the troll’s face set in a scowl, while Terezi hangs back with what would be a hangdog expression on anyone else.  On her, it’s just disturbing.

 

Dave is shaking hands with… well, with Dave, only his doppelganger is bright orange and clearly part crow.

 

Jane isn’t sure what she expected, but it wasn’t this.

 

Dave inclines his head in a nod to sprite-Dave (Davesprite?) and says simply, “Dave.”

 

Orange-bird-Dave shifts uncomfortably. “It’s Rook now, actually.”

 

That clearly takes Dave off guard for a moment. He swallows hard and says, “You were Dave first. If one of us is going to change, it should be me.  I can go by something else, dude, just give me a bit of time to pick out a name.”

 

“It’s cool, man,” Davesprite- Rook- replies with a shrug that literally ruffles the feathers around his neck.  Only one wing moves; the other is too damaged. “I chose Rook a while ago. Still can’t get John to use it, but you know how the kid is.  Think I’ve changed more than you have, anyway.”

 

Dave doesn’t seem reassured.  “You were still Dave first.”

 

“Let it go, _Dave_ ,” Rook stresses. “You didn’t make me change it, I chose to. And we sort of have more pressing problems right now.” He extends his working wing in the direction of the heap Jane and several of the others are currently in on the sand.  John leans over Jane to prop himself up on Jake’s shoulder and waves.

 

Jane hasn’t even found the time to react to Jade’s clearly being _part dog_. Apparently none of their ancestors had found that worth mentioning.

 

Karkat steps up, leans against Dave, and surveys everyone with a slow shake of his head. “Shit. Well, that’s everyone. Time to get our sad fucking selves to a council of war.”

 

There is now nowhere everyone feels comfortable. They end up cobbling together shelters on the part of Jake's land that still mirrors his island. Rose and Kanaya leave for the meteor and come back with material for tents; Jade, John and Rook find a cave together; Roxy sets up a tent for herself and Jane that leans so far into Dirk and Jake's tent that Dave rolls his eyes at them and slices an opening between the two tents.

 

Dave himself settles up in a tree above the tents with his trolls. At least they agree to put a platform up there; Jane is pretty sure the three of them were just planning to choose branches at first.

 

Rose and Kanaya set up a last tent between Jane's group and the cave before they all gather in the middle.  It isn't anywhere near dark here yet, but someone's started a firepit, and Jane finds herself dragging in logs alongside Dave, Karkat, and John so they all have somewhere to sit.

 

After some scrabbling to figure out who's sitting where, they're all seated.

 

There's a long silence as everyone looks at each other. As everyone realises that for the first time, they're all together.

 

It's somehow fitting that it's Karkat who breaks the silence, having been the first to lead a group. "Let's get the fuck down to business."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have slept in trees. I have fallen out of trees. These two things are very much related.


End file.
